the first "the end"

I'm done teaching second grade, at least until next year when my first graders will be second graders and I will teach them again. I have to admit that I almost cried at work when they all gave me flowers for the end of the school year. They are just precious to me, and I'll miss them over the summer. I even miss them over the short school holidays! When I eventually have to leave this country, if only for a little while, I will miss them even more.

It's crazy how much I love my job. Every day my students make me genuinely laugh, a lot. They also make me want to kill them sometimes, don't get me wrong. But teaching here, getting to develop real relationships with these tiny individuals, is such a blessing for me. Every time that I am sad, one of them cheers me up. Really. Every day they run up to me, so happy or so sad or so angry, because when you're seven, well, everything is a huge deal in your life. And they are happy with so little. I've gotten actual shouts of joy because a student really liked a particular tiny sticker. I think they've made me so much younger, so much happier, so much purer. Just being around them, they rub their sparkly spirits onto mine.

I have a very funny story that I have to share. A few weeks ago second grade had a unit on money, so I brought in some dollars, euros, pounds, etc. for them to look at. In one section one of the pounds went missing. So I had all the students write apology letters to Lyla, whose pound it was, for being careless. So Saturday morning Bill calls me at an ungodly hour to tell me a funny story. Apparently on Friday they found the pound while they were cleaning the classroom, and Levi (one of my favorites) basically broke into the staff room to try to sneak it onto my desk, so excited by the whole thing that he lost all his English and just started shouted "Laurene, Laurene!" (It's Lauren's, It's Lauren's!) to poor Scott, who had no idea what was going on. :)

So next week the second graders will be off at school camp, or "forest school" as they call it. Balint will be gone with them, as well as Bill, and just a lot of the school in general. I will be preparing 1B for their end-of-year show (look for a post on 2B and 2C's shows in the next few days) with Edit. I will have 1C all to myself for the week, and plan on basically playing games with them. And in between that, I will be killing just a ton of time and doing some prep work for next year.

Then we will be moving all our stuff from this flat to our new one, and sort of living in limbo between the two. And I'm so excited to have the new place.

I can't imagine next year. I don't want to. I'm very excited by the decisions I've made, and I know they are the right ones. But leaving this place, leaving these people I love (many much more than I really should), and leaving these kids? That already hurts.