Thursday, May 28, 2009

Thankful Saturday... One Chapter Closed, Another Opened

As the season for graduation parties begins, the reality of summer vacation is here. It was a good year at school, with many great accomplishments by my students. With students ranging from preschool to seniors in high school, I was constantly busy. For this reason, the year flew by.

It was just a year ago that I was offered a proposition to teach preschool three mornings a week, while the afternoons and Tuesdays and Thursdays would be my time with the junior and senior high students. I was excited about the possibility of teaching preschool, since my degree is in early childhood. My only skepticism came with not being in my other class full-time. It actually worked out well and the students got a lot of work done this year. I am really proud of them.

Once again, I am facing change in my teaching. I have been asked to teach preschool full time, with two 4-year-old classes and a 3-year-old class. I will no longer be teaching the junior and senior high students. While I'm excited about the prospect of next year, little did I realize that change would be this difficult. The reality of it hit me on the last day with my junior and senior high students. I've been hearing an undercurrent of sadness from my girls, but I think I was too busy with end-of-the year projects to worry about it too much. Some sentiments were If Miss L. isn't going to be here next year, I'm not coming back. I don't want Miss L. to leave. I think I'll homeschool next year.

Once all their tests were done on Thursday, the girls started coloring and drawing. I began to find random notes around my desk, computer, and a couple even stuck to my shirt. Here are a couple examples of what I found:


Yes, these were very cute--cute enough that I'd take pictures of them (all the while thinking of a blog post), but I almost lost it when I found this one stuck to my shirt.



It was at that point I realized this was a day of many "lasts." Last tests to grade, last daily trivia question, last goal checking, last awards program, last fun day with my students. Every thing we did that day I realized was a "last," and something inside my heart began to feel sad. I made it though the graduation and end-of-the-year slide show without any tears, and even when a parent thanked me for the years of teaching their children, I was okay. It wasn't until I went back to the classroom, after everyone was gone, that I noticed the silence and saw the empty desks and realized that my days of teaching at Grace Christian School were over.

While it hasn't always been a "bed of roses, I've enjoyed my time teaching and pray the students will do as well for their next teacher.

One chapter closed...

Another opened.

1 comment:

erin said...

awww... those notes are so sweet!
yea for new beginnings! :-)