The last day of school was Friday, and I’m scrambling now to bring together all the administrative loose ends that need to be cleaned up before the final contract day. Every year on the last day of school just before the final dismissal, we have a tug-of-war contest with the outgoing sixth-grade class.

We faced off this year in the schoolyard, standing on last year’s slippery dead grass. We haven’t had enough rain yet this spring to green it up. I stood in front on the teacher side of the rope, and kicked a small hole in the ground to brace myself. The sixth graders opposite me watched, looking a little bit worried. The teachers’ main advantage is experience. This is an event we participate in each year, but the kids have to wait until they come of age.

The Staff knows that when the whistle blows we have to pull hard and fast, taking the kids by surprise before they gain traction and a sense of their own power. In the 10 years I’ve done this, we’ve always won the first pull, as we did this year. The second pull - because the kids always demand a rematch - is a little more challenging, and never a sure thing for either side. This year, the teachers prevailed on round 2 after a struggle in which the rag tied to the rope’s middle wandered back and forth over the mark on the ground a few times. Round three is very much an iffy matter for the teachers, especially after a hard fought second round. This year we hung on, and for a few moments it looked like we’d pull them across the mark, but we couldn’t.

It’s good when they win one, I think, because we wish them strength in all their future struggles.

After all the cheering and high-fiving was over, we headed back into the building for the final goodbye’s. I was walking back with a couple of other people. My legs were shaky from exhaustion after all the hard pulling. One of my former students, a sixth-grader who’d been in my fourth-grade class two years ago, was stretched out on a bench. I congratulated him for his final victory, and he said, “You guys let us win.” He sounded disappointed. I answered, “We did not! We’re too proud to do that.”

I’ve been mining this incident for meaning, and I’m left feeling bad for kids if they see their successes as arranged set-ups, hollow victories which they claim by mere virtue of their attendance in school. For me, the tug-of-war contest symbolizes the constant struggle for teachers working to inspire students to do more than simply go through the motions, to make a sincere investment of their own that promises lasting satisfaction. I want the kids to win, but I’m not willing to let them win if they don’t work at it. The trouble, though, is that exhaustion takes a toll, and nobody is blessed with strength enough to pull constantly. I suppose that could look to the kids like letting them win, if they don’t also see our determination to honestly challenge them.

Leadership makes the big difference in how people respond to challenges. I’m looking forward to teaching sixth-graders next year, and this gives me a good starting point with some things to think about over the summer break, but for now I’ve got all that paperwork to finish.