Lucky

Today was the last day with the majority of my calc kids.

I am way more emotionally raw than I anticipated. I think this roller coaster of a year bonded us in a way that we couldn’t quite put our fingers on until today…for some reason.

I still don’t quite know what happened. All I know is there have never been so many tears shed on the last day of school in Room 2704 as there were today—from all parties involved. I know part of it must be the pure physical exhaustion from surviving a school year like no other. But there was more than that, too.

We read Oh, The Places You’ll Go! I gave them their spirit animal certificates (because I’m a 9-year-old at heart). They put their fingerprints on my flower fingerprint canvas. I read them their goodbye letter.

It’s what I do every year. But it was so, so hard this year.

In second hour, a student I’ve had for the past two years read “An Open Letter to Mrs. Peterson” for her Create project. I had no clue she was going to do this. My eyes leaked about two paragraphs in. The letter was a page and a half long.

The rest of the day was wave after wave of emotions.

I feel too emotionally exhausted to try to write tonight how much these kids mean to me. I still have a pile of cards I haven’t even touched because I know I don’t have the bandwidth for them tonight.

What I do know is what Winnie the Pooh taught us: “How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.”

I’m so, so lucky to share a classroom with these world changers.

****

From the Open Letter:

It wasn’t until my junior year that I realized I didn’t have to be perfect to be worth something. I just had to be good. To others; to myself.

Mrs. Peterson taught me that…

…Math can’t teach anyone why it is so important to love in life. It can’t dissect the difference between good and bad, it doesn’t know why people deserve to be cared for.

Lucky for us, Mrs. Peterson does.