By Derrick Brown (follow on Twitter @dbrowndbrown)
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Final Chapter (1318 Words)
(65th Day Of School)
(Friday, November 7, 2025)
By Derrick Brown (Join Our Mailing List!)
Empath Remixes #93 (Final Chapter) (1318 Words)
Premise: When Letting Go Becomes the Lesson
I arrived at Friday with confirmation ... the email that said, your leave is approved.
The line between relief and release is a fine one.
My goal was to finish the week, proctor one last test, scan the completed tests, then leave quietly.
I told myself that this day would be calm, clean, and contained.
In practice, “leaving quietly” required one final act of courage … staying still long enough to feel every emotion without reacting to any of them.
I wanted this day to be uneventful … but “uneventful” in this place often means “holding your breath.”
The irony of my profession is that teachers who give the most are often forced to practice withdrawal as self-defense.
My presence that day was not about instruction.
It was about transition.
It was a slow fade ... a last test, a last scan, a last glance around the room that had become both sanctuary and battlefield.
I was tired, but not broken.
I was ready, but not bitter.
The “final chapter” did not end the book.
It named a boundary.
Pattern: Watching Without Appearing to Do So
Each class reveals itself in patterns that repeat like parables.
The more I observe, the clearer the symmetry between structure and spirit becomes.
Containment is not only administrative.
It is emotional.
It is how teachers learn to hold their composure when logic fails and disrespect abounds.
It is the skill of noticing everything and reacting to almost nothing.
IM’s presence, absence, and resistance over the last week were perfect illustrations of this pattern.
His critique of class “down time,” his rising “commentary," his direct mockery of my “words of warning” to him ... all of it was theater … for control.
But the show was not new.
Each act was a remix of earlier performances I have seen from students, colleagues, even leaders.
The script is familiar:
· Challenge the boundary.
· Wait for the reaction.
· Recast the authority figure as aggressor.
· Escape accountability by reframing correction as persecution.
The emotional labor lies not in the conflict itself, but in managing what that conflict evokes.
My mind races through parallel explanations for his behavioral “shift” (exposure?) ... grief, guilt, insecurity, superiority, gamesmanship ... all plausible … all painful.
Every day demands that I become a detective of unspoken … perhaps unconscious … motives.
Every response must balance care and consequence.
The test room was a microcosm of this pattern.
IM arrived late, took his seat in front of the substitute, and laid his head down.
I watched without appearing to do so.
His body language told a story of defeat, despair, deviousness, or defiance ... I could not tell which.
He did not write a word.
I did not disturb him.
In that moment, stillness was my final act of discipline.
Containment as protection ... for him, for me, for the peace of the room.
Paradox: The Exhaustion of Empathy
Empathy is often praised as the highest form of teaching.
What few say out loud is that it can also be the most depleting.
I call it forensic empathy ... the kind that requires analysis, not just emotion.
It is the slow, deliberate work of interpreting behavior that is both obvious and opaque.
It demands compassion for those who do harm without accountability, and composure for those who respond to it.
The paradox is that empathy without boundaries becomes exploitation.
Students know which teachers will bend before they break.
Systems know which employees will serve until silence becomes sickness.
In these “last days,” I have learned that empathy is not always the answer.
Sometimes, endurance is.
Sometimes, discretion is.
Sometimes, walking away is the only way to preserve the capacity to care again.
My empathy has limits now ... not because I care less, but because I care longer.
I have learned that care without rest becomes resentment.
That is the lesson this final chapter delivers.
Practice: Grace in Motion
Grace showed up on this final day in small, ordinary gestures.
· SA, the substitute, arrived early. She listened carefully, and did not flinch at my "status quo” assessment. I briefed her about routines, climate, and the careful choreography of classroom management. Watching her calm reminded me that succession can be sacred work when done with clarity and kindness.
· The students entered with caution. They noticed the shift ... the new face, the unspoken tension. Then they became hyperfocused on their grade.
· I scanned the tests, packed my things, and caught myself whispering a quiet benediction to the space: thank you for what you gave me, even through what you took from me.
These small actions ... scanning, storing, stepping ... were more than procedural.
They were ritual.
They turned departure into devotion.
The practice of leaving well may be the most under-taught lesson in education.
Teachers often disappear mid-year, swallowed by burnout or bureaucracy, with little closure for themselves or their students.
I refused to vanish.
I wanted to leave a trace of presence that said … “I was here. I tried. I cared.”
This kind of grace is not sentimental.
It is strategic.
It turns departure into design.
It transforms absence into architecture ... an intentional pause between what has been and what will come next.
Peace: Farewell and Forward
Peace is not the absence of conflict.
It is the mastery of release.
As I closed the classroom door behind me, I felt a mixture of sorrow, satisfaction, and surrender.
The same walls that had witnessed so much tension now held silence.
It was not empty.
It was sacred.
This peace feels different from victory.
It is quieter, more deliberate.
It is not about being right.
It is about being ready.
Ready to rest, ready to rebuild, ready to reimagine what teaching can mean when it no longer requires the suppression of self.
I am not leaving the profession.
I am leaving the pattern.
I am leaving the cycle of hyper-vigilance, self-doubt, and containment that has reduced teaching to survival.
I am leaving so that I can return whole ... or perhaps reinvented ... as something closer to what I was meant to be … a writer, a witness, a wayfinder.
My peace does not erase the pain.
It reframes it.
The exhaustion, the disrespect, the hostility ... all of it becomes data in the larger ethnography of endurance.
I have learned that peace, like learning, is recursive.
It must be practiced daily, restored weekly, and guarded always.
Selah: The Teacher’s Benediction
In the language of music, Selah means to pause, to rest, to reflect.
It also means to let what has been said resonate.
Today, Selah sounds like this:
· A teacher departs his classroom, not in defeat, but in discernment.
· A classroom falls silent, not from fear, but from transition.
· A substitute takes her place at the front, holding the weight and wonder of continuity.
I leave this chapter with gratitude, not grievance.
I have seen too much to pretend that the system is well.
I have learned too much to believe that the sickness is terminal.
There is still life here ... in the curiosity of students, in the courage of colleagues, in the clarity of writing.
The work now is to convert all of this into testimony.
To organize the archives, index the essays, and illuminate the invisible architecture of what it means to teach in a system that both needs and neglects you.
This “final chapter” is not a closing.
It is a comma.
It is the pause before the next Beatitude, the next Remix, the next Walk.
It is the boundary that becomes a bridge.
And so I walk ... with less weight, but more witness.
I leave not to escape, but to expand.
I end this chapter the way I began the first …
with open eyes, steady heart, and quiet hope that all of this will mean
something.
Selah.
(The "Follow The Leader (changED - Volume 2)" Audio and Video Album / Mixtape is also available at TeachersPayTeachers.com)
(The "changED (Volume 1)" Audio and Video Album / Mixtape is also available at TeachersPayTeachers.com)
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I am a “standup storyteller.”
I fuse rap, spoken word (poetry), oration (traditional public speaking), singing, and teaching into messages of hope, healing, and change that I write, direct, and produce to help people who help people.
Everything must change - and stay changED.
Tradition begins and ends with change.
Change begins with me and the renewing of my mind ... then continues through efforts to effect small-group discipleship (equipping others to equip others) with audiences that respect and embrace mentoring, mediation, and problem solving as tools of change.
I am the product of my mentoring relationships, peacemaking (and peacekeeping), and problem-solving ability.
My education began when I finished school.
After school, I enrolled in a lifelong curriculum that includes classes in ministry, entrepreneurship, stewardship, literacy, numeracy, language, self-identity, self-expression, and analysis / synthesis.
My projects execute a ministry that has evolved from wisdom earned through lessons learned.
I want to share this wisdom to build teams of "triple threat" fellows - mentors, mediators, and problem solvers.
We will collaborate in simple, powerful ways that allow us to help people who help people.
I now know that power is work done efficiently (with wise and skillful use of resources, interests, communication, and expertise).
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