Here’s the opening part of a great article that Mark Pomeroy wrote about his time at Marshall High School, which is closing soon:

A  week from graduation, she walks into her English class, sits down and looks to the overhead screen for the day’s prompt: “Neighborhood.” For a minute she quiets herself, pen in hand.

With each passing day, school seems both closer and more distant. Surges of memory — her teachers, her classes these past four years, all the hallway conversations, the languages. The halls used to be more crowded, livelier, but now some of her classmates show up every other day, if that.

Her teachers tell them they matter, no one is abandoning them. They can’t take it personally, that’s the thing. Life’s not always fair. And they know it’s true, and also, enrollment was on the low side compared to other high schools.

Still — this place is theirs. For some kids, it’s home, where they can come to know that people will pay attention to what they’re thinking. Where they can find a few moments of calm. Where they can eat.

“I live in the wilderness of the economy,” she writes on the first line of her paper.

To read the entire article, click here.

Mark applauding an author's work at a student reading.