“I was trying to feel some kind of good-bye. I mean I’ve left schools and places I didn’t even know I was leaving them. I hate that. I don’t care if it’s a sad good-bye or a bad good-bye, but when I leave a place I like to know I’m leaving it. If you don’t you feel even worse.” – J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
To my Indy kids, present and recent:
I hope you’ll forgive me for not addressing this during the last month and a half of school as more and more of you surmised that something was up. Please know that it was because I care first and foremost about your education, and didn’t want to detract from it. Quite frankly I didn’t know at the time exactly what the conclusion to the situation would be, so I also wanted to wait until I did. Not to mention, if I may break from my stable adult tone here, that all the tissues in the world could not have handled my own potential reaction to telling some of you face-to-face.
The time has come to provide a brief but factual explanation, so here it is: after having my teaching duties at IHS dramatically reduced due to financial reasons and declining enrollment, I made the difficult but necessary decision to seek employment elsewhere. I hoped all summer that perhaps something would work out so I could stay at IHS, but unfortunately that is not the case. Last week I accepted a full-time position at Cuyahoga Heights.
I hope that being only a few miles away means I will still run into many of you often. Your development into literate, intelligent human beings has been a huge focus of my life over the past five years, and a joyful result of that has been that I have gotten to know many of you quite well. You have challenged me, fascinated me, taught me, and made me proud of you. In sharing your talents, you’ve introduced me to books, music, art, and technology that I would have been unaware of otherwise. You’ve made me think, laugh, reconsider, and yes, even cry a few times.
Please don’t take it personally that room 212 will be (to my knowledge, at least) empty this year. I’m still available to suggest books, write college recommendations, and hear about your random encounters with old vocabulary words and literary characters. I have yet to decide whether I’ll keep using this blog or start a new one, but I will leave it up nonetheless and I can always be reached via email at ms.neville@gmail.com or Twitter @ms_neville . Feel free to pop in sometime to let me know where you are and what adventures you’re having!
Good luck and best wishes to you all. Most importantly, though, THANK YOU for etching five years’ worth of good memories into the hard drive of my brain.
Love,
Ms. Neville-Jellen
P.S. For the many of you who read the previously quoted novel in my class, I think I should end with Holden’s quote from about a page later:
“Sleep tight, ya morons!”
Apologies to those of you who don’t get the joke… reading the book will remedy that!
Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a comment »
Ms. Neville's Class Resources 