The end of an era.

Today was the last day of my first year as a teacher. But even though more days have been terrible this year than the days that have been good, and even though I've been counting down the days till today for months...I woke up oddly down. These kids have tried every last bit of my patience. They have threatened me, destroyed my personal belongings, vandalized my classroom, and cussed me out on a daily basis. They have tried to kick down my classroom door, they have gone entire marking periods without doing a single assignment, and they have literally chased subs out of my room after three minutes. They have been led out of the school by police officers. And even though some of them are really not my favorite people in the world, some of them kind of are.

I’m having a really difficult time writing this post, mostly because I don’t know what I want to say or how to say it. I have spent the last year dying to get out of that place and away from those kids, and now that I’m officially gone I feel like I need more time with them. I have two girls who call me “Mom,” one girl who comes to hide in my classroom to cry when she’s having a bad day, and a boy who spent two weeks threatening my fiancée because I should have married him. I have a boy who has shared all of his sadness and frustration about his dad who has been stationed indefinitely in Korea. I have two boys who almost daily ask me why I’m leaving and am I sure I want to leave because they will really miss me. I have relationships with these kids that I’ve only just started to become aware of. And now that it’s, for all intensive purposes, over…I’m having a really difficult time getting over it and moving past it.

One of my boys, the one with the father stationed in Korea, came up to me and was chatting a few days ago and I told him that he kicked butt in the teacher-student basketball game, and he got excited and said that he can’t wait next year to be on varsity. I told him that I can’t wait either because I’m going to come back to watch him play. He got so excited and asked me repeatedly if I meant it, and I told him that I’m completely serious and that I’ll come as often as I can to watch. This morning he came into my homeroom and asked me again, totally serious and quiet, if I was really going to come watch him play next year. I told him again that I can’t wait to come back and see him play. This afternoon, when the last bell rang and my kids were dismissed, I stood in the doorway and hugged student after student as they walked out, so many of which mean so much to me. That boy, though, hung back and waited, holding hands with his girlfriend, for everyone else to leave. Then they both came up and separately hugged me and thanked me, and then walked out quietly.

I didn’t expect a lot of things about this year…but I think what I expected the least were the tears I’m fighting back right now as I think about not seeing them every day anymore.