Seven weeks left in this 2015-2016 school year.  Seven weeks.  That’s like one week in … dog weeks?

I don’t know if I can accurately express just how insane that is.  Because I met this new group of students just yesterday.  They walked a bit hesitantly into my classroom, I shook their hands, learned their names, asked them about their hobbies and their families and their favorite books… And though some of them were a lot shorter then, it’s true, it just can’t possibly be real that they’re leaving me in about the lifespan of a worker honey bee. Which I suppose is apt – because that’s what I feel like most of the time and I’m guessing they do, too.

They’re practically out the door already: all limbs and long hair, half smiles and eyes full of questions.  How did that happen?  Time, the wise turtle, kept right on passing while I, the whirlwind hare, rushed around — silly hare. And here we are, May knocking on the door and coming to stay for a month.

I’ll tell you, and I’ll try not to sway into the melodramatic here, I am going to miss these young people — who are full grown people, some of them, but with still-growing minds and ever-changing preferences — all that beautiful, mixed-up adolescent swagger.  Thoughtful, observant, opinionated, curious people.  Who, by the way, are great stewards of the world, even now.

Is it possible that regular folks don’t know how attached teachers get to students during the ups, downs, tremendous growth spurts and equally tremendous upheavals that occur during a school year? Surely I’m not the only one who feels wistful come spring.

I may not have time seven weeks from now to write again about their imprint on my life this year; a year that was not – personally – as simple or smooth as I wish they all could be.  I would like to here thank them now, then, for their kindnesses and patience, for their adventurous spirits and their unending efforts.  To engage in life and learning — that’s the goal.  These kids have hit that goal and kept soaring.  To the moon, kiddos.  To the moon.