Space Savers

The last week of school is a space-saver bag.

With only seven days of class before semester exams, teachers cram as much information and as many tests into each fifty-minute period as possible. If it were sweaters and linens being packed away, the hiss we hear would be the welcome sound of space-wasting air being sucked out of a neatly nesting bag; instead, it is the frustrated sigh of students, passing on "excellent" and settling for "good enough."

After a seven-hour day at school, they head home for the other half of the workday: finish a research paper for English, work thirty problems for Algebra II, build a model of the Capitol out of legos for American History, build a model of a simple sugar molecule for Chemistry, and learn a Christmas song in French for -- well, for French.

Lord, help me be aware of the workload of my students. You tell us to bear one another's burdens, and the classroom is no exception. Help me find the balance between challenging and over-demanding. . . because even those space-saver bags will only hold so much before they pop.