It's over.
My first year of teaching is completely finished. My rooms are cleaned up. My things are home where they belong. Instruments have been returned to the schools from which they came. Everything is exactly where it should be, so why does it feel like this isn't really happening?
After the bell rang, all the eighth graders met up outside and were crying as they said goodbye to everyone. A group of girls that were the toughest to break through to at the beginning of the year came up to give me a hug and let me know that they would come back to visit. Their faces and eyes were completely red from all of their teary goodbyes.
The crowd of emotional eighth graders diminished as their rides came and the buses pulled out. As I turned to start heading back inside, two boys who had been in two separate sections of choir came up to me. One of these boys was the student I had who couldn't speak a word of English at the beginning of the year. The other was the student who seemed to be getting into trouble all the time and was hanging out with the tough crowd that was affiliated with gangs. As they walked up to me, they looked around to make sure none of their friends were around and the second held out his hand to me so I shook it. He just looked up and said, "thanks." One word. The other boy followed suit and did the same thing, and as they walked away, the tears that I had been holding back through all the girls' goodbyes started welling up in my eyes and I had to look up to the cloudy sky to try and keep them from falling.
As they started leaving the parking lot, I called out their names and they turned around. I told them that I was really proud of them for all their work this year. I told them that they could have just given up or made class into a torture chamber for everyone involved, but they chose to participate and actually lead the class quite often which was commendable. I told them that I wanted them to have a fantastic summer but to make good decisions throughout it because I didn't want to see their name in the paper for anything other than the great feats they were going to accomplish. They looked at me and gave me a goofy smile with their "ok, Miss" response and turned and walked off.
Moments like those are the things to remember when I have no idea why I wanted to become a teacher in the first place.
What a way to end the year.
