At Woodlands Secondary School’s 60th anniversary on the weekend, there was music and cake; there were speeches and displays. Best of all, I think, were the decorations: one of the gymnasium walls was pasted up with white and yellow stars bearing fond “Woodlands memories” scrawled by students, staff and alumni.
Words like “community” and “spirit,” and most of all, “friendship,” kept coming up. There were a few outliers, like “making nitroglycerin in Mr. Smith’s class while he was away,” “getting in trouble” and, simply, “soup,” triple-underlined for emphasis.
Each star has a story, I’m sure. A school tends to collect stories over a span of decades, and it was special for students, staff and alumni to get a chance to share those memories again during Woodlands’ 60th and final year.
Not every school that closes throws itself a going-away bash, and that wasn’t the original intention at Woodlands. The 60th anniversary planning committee began its work before it learned the school’s fate.
“I’m not sure if we would have set it up any different, physically – I think emotionally, when you talk about it, it becomes different, though,” said Gunnar Myhrer, who has taught at Woodlands since 1989. “We didn’t really want to dwell on [school closure] and say, look at our great community, we should stay open. We didn’t want to make that a part of this. We wanted to make this totally celebratory.”
And it was, mostly. At the same time, it was obvious that a lot of people who walked the hallways one last time on the weekend were saying their goodbyes. Alumni athletes scored a few final baskets in the gym. Grads from yesteryear got a last look at their old classrooms, eerily unchanged.
A school is a museum, an archive, a trophy case and an art gallery. Woodlands’ hallways are lined with drawings and murals and handprints of graduates. There are reams of student assignments, attendance records, photographs, yearbooks, archaic computer equipment, vintage desks and memorials to students and teachers.
“How do you keep stuff? How do you acknowledge that a school has existed? Those things will have to be decided,” said Myhrer.
A school district committee is considering those questions. There will be digital archiving and some pieces of Woodlands may become historical artifacts, but other things will be preserved only as memories. Lorna Riddell, a teacher at the school since 1986, said she’ll remember walking the halls and hearing the sounds coming from the classrooms: the lessons and the laughter.
“I’ll be able to see it; I’ll be able to hear it,” she said. “What better memory could I have than all of that? And I’ll take that with me when I lock the door on the way out.”
Myhrer said organizing the anniversary was therapeutic. Perhaps it brings some closure to the school’s closure, though the transition process will continue. There will be other activities and probably some homework for students – portfolios, essays – because after all, school closure is surely a teachable moment.
Woodlands Secondary will be shut in June, Mrs. Riddell will lock the door, and all the lights will be turned off. All the lights, that is, except those stars, those Woodlands memories – those won’t flicker out for a while yet.
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