I didn’t teach The Great Gatsby this year– for the first time in 11 years of teaching. I have a somewhat bizarre obsession that began long before Leo and Jay-Z made it cool again.

I first taught the Gatsby the fall after I turned 22, when one of my only serious relationships finally came to its last end. in a lot of ways, I still chased my own past while I struggled to teach a novel that I didn’t even enjoy in high school. I found its lessons on love, letting go, and reserving judgement profound, long before I became enamored by the glitz, glamour, pearls, and lace of all things flappers and Daisy Buchanan.

My first go at the Gatsby probably left my students with few memorable classroom lessons, as I think I was the one who learned most. In many ways, I grew up this last decade with Gatsby by my side– a trusty friend and teacher who reminded me that that a long summer ahead holds all kinds of promises and life will inevitably start over again in the fall. As a teacher, this has absolutely held true, every year for the last decade, as summer always provided renewed hope and fall meant another chance to be a better person, a wiser teacher, and correct the mistakes from the prior year.

Over the years, I’ve honed the lessons of Gatsby into ways to reach students and have learned how to make a classic applicable and even modern to teenagers. The last few years my classroom has turned into a full fledged 20s throwback, complete with a movie project and a full costume Gatsby luncheon on the last days of school in May.

Last May, I wrapped up my last full year of teaching in a style of which I’m sure Fitzgerald would have been proud. I began the day in white as Daisy Buchanan, and most of my students dressed up; the guys wore snazzy suits and the girls went all out with flapper dresses, pearls, floppy hats and feathered hair pieces. We drank school appropriate versions of Mint Juleps, ate finger sandwiches and watched the student remakes of Gatsby scenes. It was a fantastic final day of glitz, jazz, pearls and Gatsby charm. As the new movie released, we took our party to the theater in partial costume to witness the modern interpretation.

Daisy Buchanan at our luncheon last May.

In the absence of a classroom to decorate this spring, I redecorated our guest bathroom in Fitzgerald’s honor. My two copies of the text with 10 years of annotations and insights made up the wall paper and I hung the 70s movie posters from my classroom. A few bits of homemade lace and old pearls helped to soften the space, and while I have yet to figure out how to hook up motion censored audio, I’m pretty content with my Fitzgerald tribute.

In spite of the fact that the past constantly does reshape my future, I also know that summer does stretch out ahead with new promises and life most certainly does start over each year; the lessons of Gatsby are inevitably accurate, even this year as the school year ends without me in it.

“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
– F. Scott Fitzgerald