Living Through It: End of the School Year

May 30, 2014 was my last day teaching, my last day as a Teach For America corps member, and my last day working with middle schoolers. The last few weeks were pretty bittersweet. They were filled with contradictory moments of "Yeah, I am not sad I will never see you again" and "How do I walk away from this?"

The week before school got out, we had a goals review day, where each class compared their final reading, writing, and objective mastery levels with our goals. Only one class met one of their goals, but all classes showed growth and some of them grew significantly. After comparing goals, we spent about 20 minutes listing everything we'd learned on the board. I let them write any specific skill or topic we'd discussed, activities and assignments we'd had, field trips, etc. They were reluctant at first but after a while I think they were surprised to see how much we really accomplished this year. I think it was rewarding for all of us to see that even among our difficulties and frustrations, we worked hard and we accomplished a lot.

8B (most of them are too cool to be in pictures)

The last Wednesday of school was 8th grade graduation. I was in charge of planning it, so I already felt more invested in it than other activities we'd done at school. A lot of these kids I've had for two years, so I was surprisingly emotional. We've had our ups and downs (lots of downs...) but they've grown, I've grown, and we've learned to work together and, dare I say it, love each other. I think seeing them all dressed up with their families reminded me that these are real kids with real lives, just trying to figure out how to make their way in the world. I'm really proud of them

Selfie with Shoaf!

Dawmonique and Trinity (and Ms. Oden who was their 6th grade English teacher and a great mentor for me last year). These girls have pushed me this year, Trinity both years, but we've come out better for it. It took Dawmonique a while to decide how she felt about me this year, but after a quarter or so she decided I was her favorite teacher and would tell me she loved me all the time, except of course for the days when she hated me. Trinity is a brilliant student with loads of talent, smarts, and potential with a super-sized serving of attitude. We had some rough points, but she always came around and we grew to love each other.

Shayla. One of the best students I can imagine. She's super smart and a great worker, but she's also just very pleasant, engaged, and easy to teach. She's the one that I could always count on to be listening, participating, and making my life easier.