Last week with my first class.

WHEW! I can't even believe how quickly/crazy this past week has gone.  Somehow we made it through the packing up for San Fran, wedding festivities for the brobro, AND trying to soak in my last minutes with the greatest 12-year olds I've ever known. For my little "goodbye gift" for the kids, I made these memory books for them. I wrote a little letter to the class and then each of them typed up their favorite memory from this school year and created a little page about themselves. I made copies, bound the book, and woosh! It was done...3 hours later.

We had the annual 6th grade vs. Teachers kickball game (in which they got slaughtered) and then we went to the pool!

The kids created their egg containers and the principal and counselor dropped them off the school roof.

We painted class t-shirts, performed our Michael Jackson dance for the last day of school assembly, played JUST DANCE on the projector in our classroom, AND I dressed up in a sweaty sumo suit and raced other teachers across the gym.

I collected a heap of books to bring with me to SF for my summer reading.

And all 28 of us cleaned out the classroom.

It was a very tearful Friday.  Most of you know, but I was lucky enough to student teach this same grade when they were in 5th grade last year.  Of course I didn't have the exact same class, but I knew almost every single one of them already on the first day of school.  It's an interesting thing to spend 180 days of your life with 12-year olds.  It's such a fun, blossoming, crazy age.  They become like your own children; you want the best for them, you want them to succeed and to make good choices.  

I seriously love each of them so much & I will never forget those sweet 27 kiddos that marched right into my life back in August (and some before that, even).  They are one of the most tender mercies I've ever had in my life.  Exactly one week before school started, JD's dad had his stroke.  The stroke was anything but mild and I learned exactly what it felt like to cry so hard that you can't breathe.  It was an extremely hard time for the whole family & the thought of starting my first year of teaching just days later, seemed completely out of reach.  There were so many other things going on and it felt like everything was tugging at my heart strings.  When JD left the morning after the stroke, I spent a lot of time at my Aunt and Uncle's house.  My uncle Justen gave me a blessing one night that I would be able to be both the wife my husband needed me to be, and the teacher that those kids needed me to be.  The Lord really did bless me to feel at ease and to relate to and love those boys and girls.  I think he also blessed those kids to know how to make me laugh and smile and feel comfortable in times where my personal situations were anything but comfortable.

I don't have a lot of talents, but I think I turned out alright as a teacher.  Don't get me wrong.  Teaching is ANYTHING but easy.  I spent the first few months feeling like someone suffering from bi-polar disorder!  One moment you feel like you're on top of the world and the next, you feel like you might explode.  However, I loved those kids and I'm pretty sure they loved me right back.  They were everything I needed them to be during those hard first few months of our emotional rollercoaster with the family.  I don't know that any of them will really understand the magnitude of what they did for me as a person, but I sure am grateful to the Lord for blessing me with those exact 27.       

Without a doubt in my mind, these are the students that my own children will be hearing stories about 20 years from now.  Amidst all the craziness, frustrations, tears, impatience, and difficulties (in AND out of the classroom), I feel confident that I can walk away from this first year of teaching knowing that I did my best and that I loved those kids with everything in me.  I hope they never forget that.