Yesterday afternoon, I closed up my classroom for 10 days. 

Nate the Great, Cam Jansen, Nancy Drew, and the rest of their mystery-solving cohort are back on the bookshelves. Multiplication anchor charts are rolled up and put away until we need them again later this winter, and the December Number Corner calendar has been swapped out for January. Students’ folders have been emptied, cubbies organized, and pencil boxes cleaned out. I even remembered to water the classroom plants before leaving, which is proof that this is a season of miracles.

The break from school that began today is so badly needed. The kiddos are exhausted. So are the grownups who work with them every day. We all need some time away. Most of us, anyway, but more on that in a minute.

The whole point of this break for many is to celebrate Christmas, but personally, I’m looking forward to the stretch from Dec. 26 to Jan. 1, when there are no demands, no expectations, no plans. I hope to get in some really good staring blankly into space. A bunch of naps. Some reading and writing if I’m feeling ambitious. But not much else.

This stretch of time is crucial for making it through the long, wintery stretch that takes us from the beginning of the new calendar year to almost the end of February. At least for me. I’m still new to teaching, being in only my second year, but my years as a paraeducator and behavior interventionist taught me that spending the next week or so going straight out, on the go constantly, is a sure-fire way to be exhausted all over again by the middle of January. 

School staff show up to school every day, lighting the way for students and one another. Our candles have been burning brightly since the end of August, and our wicks are little more than smoldering nubs at this point.

Lesson planning, behavior management, crisis counseling, putting out (hopefully metaphorical) fires, cheerleading kiddos and adults, crying on supportive shoulders, providing a supportive shoulder to cry on, being flexible, implementing new approaches while refining old ones, making the reports no educator wants to make, being unexpectedly elated one moment and unexpectedly let down the next … we need time to craft new candles to bring light to the new year.

Kids need the same thing: the opportunity to rest and recharge. Some get it, and some don’t. It’ll be pretty obvious which are which when school reopens.

Some kids would’ve preferred that there was no vacation at all. They were easy to see these past few days. Amped up and acting out, expressing their big feelings as much as they could before going back to a place where they aren’t safe expressing such things. 

It’s easy to forget in the lead-up to break and the holidays that for some students, school is the preferred place to spend time. Especially students who don’t really act like they enjoy being at school. But that’s not the case. Far from it. Those kiddos are letting things out in the only safe place they know, and for them, school is far more than the place they go to learn stuff. It’s a daily port in the tumultuous storm that is their young lives.

My hope for those kiddos, along with all the other students and my colleagues, is that in some way, the next few days bring an opportunity to make and/or find peace. Whatever peace that might be. 

Peace in the form of quiet rest. Peace in the form of time spent with family and friends. Peace in the form of solitude. Maybe the peace that shows up on a late-night walk, the slurp of a dog’s kisses, or holding someone close. 

Or maybe it’s making peace with an old wound, a family member, or a co-worker. Or making the hardest peace of all: peace with yourself.

A friend of mine reminded me of a poem a few days ago, and it’s stayed with me. It’s by the great Wendell Berry, and it’s what inspired me to write this piece. I think more than anything else, this poem is what I wish for myself and everyone else as we wind down one year and begin another. It’s called The Peace of Wild Things. 

The Peace of Wild Things
By Wendell Berry
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Wherever you are, whatever you have endured, I wish you the peace of wild things. Not just now or for the holiday season or the new year, but always. We all deserve peace, regardless of what others — especially ourselves — think. 

Be healthy. Be safe. Be happy.