A sad and melancholy melody plays in the background, Jon Brion’s
Punchy-Tacky Piano, a two-minute instrumental theme he composed for the film Punch Drunk Love, a theme also heard in the background of the Largo website. If it seems like Jon Brion pops up a lot in these posts, it’s because he pops up a lot in a random iTunes shuffle, roughly 6.6% of the time. Purely mathematical. It isn’t too often that I’ve found a musical artist that I have consistently followed for a long time, without the typical disinterest that comes with long periods of time. Such musicians for me have consistently been along the lines of The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, minimalist classical composer John Adams, and the aforementioned Brion. Having only seen the latter two in live performance is at least satisfactory, and at least comparable to those basketball fans who have seen Kobe Bryant and LeBron James live and can only dream about having seen the likes of Jordan, Johnson or Bird (speaking of which, wouldn’t it be great to have a Lakers-Celtics finals this year?)

And speaking of NBA Finals, the fact that the Finals are approaching means that end of the school year is approaching. And not that I’m counting, but I’ve only got 19 more days of school left, of which about 14 are actual instructional days. It is interesting how certain external events always demarcate the ending of a school year. The NBA Finals is one of them, and every four years, the World Cup. I recall two years ago (2006) sitting in graduation rehearsal with my first group of graduates (my 2^nd year 7^th/8^th graders) checking up on my cell phone to see if Mexico had knocked off Brazil while the administration practiced reading students’ names at the church where they graduate (our auditorium is simply too small to accommodate graduation).

It’s funny because as I approach graduation, even though this is my 4^th year of teaching, it feels as if this is only the 2^nd time I’ve done this. I’ve had the amazing privilege to complete two two-year “loops” with my students; teach 7^th grade one year, then keep all the kids and teach them as 8^th graders the following year. I love this. It allows me to actually get to know some of the kids more so than the teachers who only have them for a single year. The strange part is this. Two years from now, I’ll be graduating another group of 8^th graders (this year’s 6^th graders) and attending the high school graduation of my first group of kids from two years ago. Weird. On the one hand time is going really fast, but it feels as if it’s going so slow.