High School Graduation

Wow.  So this is the first year that the students I watched grow up are going to graduate.  This years high school graduation will have students I taught in the seventh and eighth grades.  I should say, they aren’t the only students I’ve taught that have graduated but this is the first class (as in all of the graduating class) that I’ve taught.  I’m getting a little emotional.  Overall I think they might have been my favorites although the class behind them is so close it is hard to tell.  So graduation is in a few weeks and although I don’t usually go to things like that I think I’m probably going to go with my best friend, who was also their teacher.  I’ve been to Orlando and New York with a lot of these kids and watched them grow up into beautiful young men and women.  It’s almost like watching my own kids grow up I guess because for the last six years they were my kids.  What with me not having children of my own and all.  I can’t even begin to imagine how emotional I will be at my sons high school graduation. 

Since I haven’t been a teacher as long as probably most of the people that will read this I might sound naive. I wonder if more experienced teachers ever stop feeling sappy?  I guess around the time that I stopped feeling like all of the kids were mine was when I probably decided I wouldn’t make it for an entire 30 years in public education.  I guess I get too emotionally vested in the first little rugrats.  Boy would they laugh if they knew I said that.  They all thought I was mean and evil…among the many cute names I heard was ’soul sucker’ ‘the evil one’ ‘general’…teehee.  And those are the ones I feel comfortable typing out ;) 

Time for me to end this post before I go down a line of thought about why I won’t be a career teacher in public education.  Crazy to love something so much that you can’t do it, huh?

Did you have a favorite class of students?  Was your favorite class one of your firsts?  How is their high school graduation affecting you this year?

Graduation Photo Credit:  CarbonNYC from Flickr, Creative Commons License