A moment before the last bell of the year, I look out at the girls who were mine since September.Who are mine still for a few seconds more, before they are claimed by summer and next year and a new roster of teachers and subjects.

I’m still talking, explaining when they’ll find out their grades for the government exam they took a few weeks ago. Someone says something, and they all laugh. I laugh, too. Swiping at the tiny tears that form in the corners of my eyes. Laughing tears?

Through filmy eyes I take them in again. They blur into each other, navy and white and faces, a group, my group.

We’re still discussing the grades, what’s a pass and what’s an A+.

And what does it matter, I want to ask them.

I want to ask them: Will you remember me, tomorrow, next year?

I’m not a mechaneches, or an elementary school teacher who sees her girls every day. I teach the older classes, 40 minutes once a week, twice if we’re lucky. I do group stints, too, quick, get them through the course, they need to pass. But they are girls, people, lives. Not just a quick job.

They must know that. Feel that. Do they?

I look at them again; they are already gathering their stuff, riffling through papers, perhaps only to throw them out as soon as I leave. I blink, and the window at the back, the one spilling sun, beckoning them outdoors, darkens. We are back in winter, writing together as dusk’s last light strokes the tops of the trees and the tops of our heads, as the sun dips and disappears and we talk stories and themes and change.

They are trusting, these girls, baring vulnerabilities, some in front of the group, some just on paper. But it’s not just a paper — they know that I will read it. And yet they write about their lives, and their hopes and struggles, and their grandmothers. When I read their papers to mark them, I am touched and awed by their sharing, by their depth, by their richness of experience.

The window rattles, changes, and it’s a different classroom. There is a girl with owlish glasses, newly arrived from another country, coming over to tell me that she is dyslexic, sharing her needs and requirements with assertiveness and confidence. And further still, a year back, two years, is a girl with an oversized, overworn uniform top. She doesn’t have a home to call her own. She is being fostered this year. The teachers have been told to turn a blind eye, to let things go. But she pushes herself, setting the achievement bar high, as though it’s all smooth sailing, and she soars over that bar.

Full of surprises, these girls. That whirling ball of energy, not a care in the world, who’d been grounded enough to apologize for taking it too far. The one who didn’t notice her own slipping glasses but commented on the clear build-up of the material.

Briiing.

The memories ebb away into the sunny stream from the window. I am here, on the last day of the year. And maybe these girls will remember what we created together. Maybe they were touched because I’m so touched, by them, by other girls, by other years.

We exchange goodbyes. And then I am leaving and the staffroom is mostly empty, and it’s not just the last day in that class, it is also the last day in this school. Because the syllabus has changed, they won’t be offering my class next year, so I’ll be working in another place.

I take the key to my classroom, the one that hung between my home key and my USB, dislodge it from the ring, and hang it on the hook beside the secretary’s desk. She’s gone already on this last Friday of the year.

My keys feel too light. Wrong. I put them in my bag with a sigh, consider taking the bus home from the stop across the road, but find myself still walking on the wrong side, walking on, as the cars flow past, no longer swiping at my eyes, no longer pretending that the tears that pool are laughing tears.

It’s too much, this. This touching lives, and touching hearts. And then leaving it behind, keys and all.

But I am going to do it again next year. New students, new people. Because somehow, somewhere, it is worth it. I just have to close my eyes and see those girls who touched my life to know.

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 596)