Chloe returns this weekend for college and Thursday is my last class with a wonderful group of students. I shall miss all of them. It's always sad to say goodbye to students, people who were strangers at the beginning of the term but who—in many cases—became friends as the quarter progresses. Saying goodbye to my daughter and to these students makes me think about what I am giving them as they go out into the world and whether I have done for them what I should to equip them against all the things that can—that will—befall them. Have I done my job, as a mother and as a teacher?

As I was pondering this question, I ran across a poem about teaching that I would like to share with you in this last lecture as we say goodbye. One of the reasons I like the poem is that it reminds me of the kind of books I poured over during my summers spent with my grandparents in Walnut. These were not great literature by any means, consisting mostly of stories and poetry out of date even then, school textbooks in many cases, filled with the kind of material my grandparents were required to memorize in school and, in this instance anyway, oozing all the sentimentality and Christian religion that dominated the American educational system at the turn of the nineteenth–twentieth centuries, when my grandparents were young. (In fact, the poem was published by Glennice L. Harmon in 1948.) Despite its slightly sappy overtones, I decided to share it with you, my students in what has been an exceptionally rewarding class for me, since I often find it easier to speak of deep feelings through someone else rather than expressing them directly. So here is the poem, with apologies for the syrupy sentimentality.