My favorite day of the year is the first day of school!!! Hands down! No questions asked! There is no better day during the course of a year! On the first day of school you get your class rosters, and you put names to faces, even if you already knew those faces from prior years. Students move up a grade until they are finally in your classroom. Everyone is excited for the first day! You see teachers you haven't seen all summer. You get the first glimpse of what the school year beholds when you meet with your classes for the first time. The students walk into my classroom and they probably think I am insane with the amount of posters and historical flags, bobbleheads, president Pez dispensers, books on the shelves -- both serious and ridiculous -- and the random assortment of pictures from students of previous years. I even get excited handing out the syllabus and going over our goals for the school year! I think about the fun times we're going to have learning American history and government. I think about the upcoming lessons. I can't wait for the talks about how difficult it was to live down river at Jamestown, the road to the American Revolution where we throw snowballs at each other, our Second Continental Congress re-enactment, the government unit, my love for Andrew Jackson, the Manifest Destiny portrait, dressing up for the bloody Civil War, the corrupt millionaire and billionaires of the Gilded Age, TR and the reforms, etc! I try to visualize how some of the tests and papers will look. I think about what jokes we'll have in class over the course of the year. I think about the same bad jokes I crack and how this group of kids will respond, even though I know they will say I’m lame just like the previous students. I picture the presidential projects coming in and what neat facts and pictures will be added this year that are new. I think about the XC, Basketball, and Track & Field seasons. Will we be good? How will the weather be? Which kids will come through at the right time? What kids will take the leadership roles without being asked? How are the kids going to like this play? Will we win it all...again? I think about the field trips! Will the weather be good in DC? I can’t wait to walk through the Museum of American History with the students. Mount Vernon will be a blast! I hope they love the trip as much as I will. I hope I get to go to Israel...how will this year be?! Which kids will truly appreciate the trip and what will be the highlights for the students. I can’t wait to see the pictures and hear their stories. All of those thoughts on the first day of school seem to fly by. August...September and the Simchat Torah service with the whole school! YAY!....October & XC ends but basketball begins next week!..Wow where has the time gone?....November….Thanksgiving!...Midterms...Winter Break & we’re already HALFWAY there?!...Did everyone have a good Winter Break and Chanukah?...January....February and basketball ended? It felt like we just started!...It's already March?....Washington, DC then Passover Break....April, seriously April?!....This is the end of ALL sports??!!.....Finals…..We’re going on a big trip we’re going to Israel…..the last all-school Kabbalat Shabbat.....Where has the year gone? Why do they have to leave?
...Tomorrow is my least favorite day of the year, let alone the school year. The last day. I even dread the word: Graduation. The students who I have spent the past year with now graduate. They were sixth graders not too long ago, seventh graders just last year, and it seemed like a second ago they were beginning eighth grade...Now, they leave. I don't get to see them "next year". Now that we've spent 180 days getting to know each other, learning with each other, laughing with each other, getting frustrated with each other, and loving each other. We’ve become a family. We’ve become a kehillah. They are not just students, they are my students. They are my kids. Then, it all of a sudden becomes the time to say the worst word; goodbye...A famous author once said, there’s a reason they call these ceremonies “commencement exercises”. Graduation is not the end, it’s the beginning. Graduation means goodbye to the eighth graders, but it is also the beginning of the rest of their lives...