Nostalgia

We have 15 days of school left, and while I am counting each and every one of them with the same anticipation and glee as my students, there is a part of me that is dreading the end of school.

I think, in retrospect, that I do this every year - want to be DONE with school, and the obnoxious kids and their (mostly) very difficult parents, but then when the last days arrive, I am not ready to go yet. I'm kind of at that cross roads right now.

Maybe this year it has to do with the group of 8th graders who are graduating. Overall, they have been known as the "good group" from the 6th grade team - the class from last year pales in comparison and next year's bunch of hoodlums is, well, a group of high-class hoodlums. This class, the high school class of 2012, is a good group - solid, smart, kind, talented.

And for me, personally, this group is the group that started it all. I was a first year teacher here when these kids were in 5th grade. I have followed some of them for the whole time I've been at this school. A few I have watched grow up from gangly pre-teens to young men and women. And then there are a few I've known for the last 2 years - most of them I wanted to kill with my bare hands last year, and even some of those kids I know I will miss.

Its funny, but somehow knowing that the day will soon come when the kids from last year, the ones I was so willing and wanting to put up for adoption and swore on my grandmother's grave that I would never work with again, knowing that their days are numbered and soon they will move on makes me almost want to go back and work with them again. (almost - I am nostalgic, but not completely insane).

I guess it is just hard to say goodbye. Even when you want to. Even when you think you cannot wait to be rid of the thing you are leaving. Even when the thing you are going toward is great and fun and exciting.

Its weird, this time of year. Part of me wants to just get it over with and be done, and part wants it to linger and to take it all in slowly. Part of me can't wait to say goodbye and good-riddens to the school, the kids, the annoyances, the stress, and part isn't ready to let go.