Tomorrow

"Oh the sun will come out tomorrow, so you gotta hang on to tomorrow, come what maaaa-y." --Annie

Tomorrow wraps another year of school.  It has been an exhausting year.  A good year, but an exhausting one.  Tomorrow I will wake up, get the kids up and to school, photocopy report cards, file them, and stuff the original in envelopes.  I will take my class to mass and afterwards, I will say goodbye to the group.  Tomorrow summer vacation will begin.

St. Luke is in the process of becoming an IB school.  I've worked hard to embrace and understand the change.  It's meant really spending a lot of time this year creating units, but with documentation like I'm in a masters program.  It's meant being very intentional with my teaching.  It was a lot of work, but I'm so proud of what I accomplished.  Obviously, there is plenty of room to improve and grow, but at the end I saw 6th graders achieving at a level I don't think they even knew they could.

My partner and I did a retreat for the first time.  We took kids to camp.  Today the kids did a cook off competition.  I could not have been more proud of how everyone worked together.  Despite have 22 kids, not one stood around doing nothing.

This year I took on a volunteer opportunity with Prepares, and walked the path of pregnancy and motherhood with a teen mom.  It's been more hours, more stress, more energy than either my husband or I imagined when I first signed on to help.  In the end, I've become friends with a family and fallen in love with a little baby girl.  It has been far from easy, but it's one of things when you know this is something you were meant to do.

Tonight I started reading through a couple of cards I got from students.  I have had an amazing group of supportive parents.  Note: teachers really do love randomly finding flowers on their desks or being brought a latte or just a kind note or email out of the blue.

Maybe it's the exhaustion, but I teared up when I read the card a student gave me.  It was just one sentence.  "Thanks for believing in me."  After the literal blood, sweat, and tears I have poured into this group of kids, this one sentence puts the hard work into perspective.  Middle school is not for the faint of heart.  I teach middle school because I had a 7th grade teacher who believed in me, who made me feel like I mattered.  It means the world to know that I am able to pay that forward just a little bit.

Today I was so exhausted I took an hour long nap after school.  I'm ever so slowly packing for family camp because tomorrow afternoon we are going to Gallagher.  It's a crawl to the finish line, but tomorrow is only a day away.