Some Thoughts on the Conclusion of the 2021–2022 School Year

This year has been hard in a way that no year has ever been hard before.

All illustrations are by the author.

I teach seniors at a public high school in Chicago, and their last day of school was Friday. Last year, I thought the students in the graduating class of 2021 had the hardest time of any class ever. They hadn’t gotten to set foot in a classroom for their entire senior year. The year before, I thought the students in the graduating class of 2020 had the hardest time of any class ever. They didn’t get to have a prom, or an in-person graduation.

But I now think that this year has been the worst. It’s been worse because there was this glimmer that things would get “back to normal”; that as far as school was concerned, the pandemic was over, and we could all begin to heal. Then came disappointment after disappointment.

I work at an arts high school, where students go to school for nine straight hours (!!!) in exchange for pre-professional arts education, culminating in performances and live events to celebrate their hard work. For the most part, this year, the performances were promised, but then got truncated or canceled. Prom (rated by some of my seniors as a “solid C-”) ended up being a super-spreader event. And there were very few resources for processing what had just…