Epilogue and Afterword Summary and Analysis

Epilogue: Codell writes three years after the events of the journal, attending the graduation of her former fifth-graders. She is "most surprised by how little has changed" (p. 189). She watches her former fifth-graders graduate from middle school and she thinks they look about the same. Mr. Turner is still the same, a blowhard, on stage giving a graduation speech. Speech after speech addresses the future, but not the present, and to Codell they begin to sound like pleas, begging the students not to turn to a life of crime.

Of her thirty-one fifth-graders, only sixteen are crossing the stage to graduate. Codell doesn't know if they moved, or failed, or something else. Then she wonders at her own progress in the three years. She worked at the school for two more years. In the second year, she...