Winding Down

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What a weird feeling.

The biggest challenge of my life (so far) is coming to a close.

I can’t help but think of the many nights I’ve spent crying and crying and wishing I could go anywhere but school the next day.  When the time comes for that thing you’ve constantly dreaded to end… it seems like the feeling should be HUGE and grand.  Like a million pounds have been dropped from your shoulders.  But instead… the year just winds down so darn gradually!  You progressively have less material to teach, fewer deadlines to stress about, fewer students to deal with (due to the semester test exemption policy), and it all ends with a shortened school-week (counting Memorial Monday and the half-day for the last semester test.)

Students who have been especially special have come in to give me a hug (since they don’t have to come back for semester tests)… and we look at each other like, “Wow.  This is weird.  Two years of being together every day and this is goodbye.”

For two years, I’ve been hard on them.  I’ve taught them everything I could… filling up every spare second of the 52 minutes I have with them.  I’ve established a “norm” where no matter what language they speak to me I always answer in Spanish.  I’ve given them D-halls and corrected their behavior.  I’ve laughed at their funny skits or comments.  Saying goodbye to students is weird.  You haven’t always been their best friend… so a hug seems out of place.  But a wave and a goodbye is SO not enough.

Again, I repeat that the feeling is just weird.  It’s like watching a big bear you’ve been wrestling with for 4 hours straight suddenly lie down and go to sleep and you get to just leave the room.

I wish there was some ceremony where I could “graduate” from teaching just like I graduated from Harding.  Where someone could officially shake my hand and say, “You did it” and recognize how hard it was to get through it and how many times I contemplated quitting, and then hand me a piece of paper that says, “Congratulations on a successful two years of teaching… what a two years its been.”

Maybe I’ll make a special victory dinner for Superman and me to honor the occasion and we can call it my “2^nd High School Graduation.”   I can play Pomp & Circumstance in the background and make him announce me and hand me a certificate and we can record it on Lana’s camera and always have it as a memory.  We probably just need to actually have Matt and Lana over for the dinner come to think of it.

Lana… interested?

And any other blog readers… Crows?  Cheathams?  Sha?  Come one come all.