Onto Summer

Yesterday I concluded my last day of the school year!  I'm sure I say this every time, but the very last day of school always brings on a sort of bittersweet feeling.  On the one hand, it is an enormous sigh of relief,  knowing you no longer have to wake up at the break of dawn, plan lessons, grade papers, fight to capture and maintain the students' attention, etc., etc.  But on the other hand, it makes me feel sad that I will never be these kids' teacher again.  We bond with each other throughout the year and they start to feel like family to me.  Even the little crap heads that drive me nuts start to feel like family (ironically, it's always these same ones that end up visiting me three years later, too).

I started class yesterday by having an end-of-the-year raffle.  After that, we all sat down and watched a photo story of pictures I took throughout the year; everything from "Pajama Day" to "Crazy Hat Day."  I make one of these every year and set it to music; it always ends up making the kids cry.  After the photo story, we played games.  I ended up playing Uno, Scattergories, Twister (that one was pretty funny), and some charade's game in which you had to act out and sound out two completely unrelated things (the first time, I had to sing like a fairytale princess while creating a sculpture, the second time I had to toast a marshmallow while giving my Miss America acceptance speech).  Seventh period asked if we could do one big giant group-hug outside, so that's exactly what we did.  I know it's corny, but it was awesome.  It was the perfect way to end the year.

After cleaning up my classroom, turning in my grades and relinquishing my keys, I went to La Casita with Niecy and three other teachers to enjoy a few margaritas in celebration of the end of the school year.  The hostess, who happens to be the mom of one of my students, treated us to a round of shots.  I'm not sure what it was a shot of (pretty much burned all the way down), but that, along with my two margaritas, left me feeling very relaxed and pleasant.  When I got home later, no one was there, and I was feeling way too happy to be alone.  I finally found them at the dojo, where I stayed for awhile, just cheerfully chatting with people.  Today I was hoping that it wasn't too obvious that I was a tiny bit inebriated (doesn't "inebriated" sound so much better than "drunk"?).

Now onto summer!  I have lots of plans, but I don't want to list them because I don't want to set myself up for failure.  Gotta love that unwavering confidence.  I'll just write about things as they come and go.