No more pencils, no more books...

Tomorrow is the last day of school. I have this recurring daymare that it's not really the last day of school and I have it wrong and I'm gonna get busted when I don't show up next week. But that's me. I have a crapload to do in my room and I haven't even stuffed my report card envelopes yet, so I need to get to school molto early tomorrow. School dismisses at 9:22 a.m. Yep, 9:22. It was 9:15 but we had to add 7 minutes to our day, every day, between March and now to make up for our 2 snow days this winter.

So today was our last real day of school. Tomorrow, I'm handing out diplomas and little presents and we're gonna have tearful goodbyes. I am a total wimp and manage to cry every time I leave a class. It happened with student teaching and I think it will be worse this time. I am going to try to hold it together, for everyone's sake.

I love kindergarten for a few reasons. One is that if kids are acting up, you can pick 'em up and move them to a safe spot. You can't do that with highschoolers; even short ones. But more to the point, kindergarteners love their teachers and they're not too cool to admit it. It's quite gratifying. I don't know if it's necessarily healthy, but my kids ask me if I can be their teacher next year. They're super excited to be first graders but at the same time they don't want to go. They really love kindergarten and they love our class and that's so fun, because I figure whatever I did or didn't do for them, they don't hate being in school. So I count that as a victory.

So yeah, I'm going to miss them this summer. I don't think it's sunk for me yet that the year's over. And next year they'll be big first graders and they probably won't even talk to me :-( . Plus, it's a little overwhelming to think that in the fall we start ALL OVER AGAIN with a brand-new crop....