4th Quarter...Already?!?!

Every year I am amazed at how fast the year flies by me. I start every year saying, "There is no way I am going to make it the WHOLE year." Before you judge, let me explain to you why these words come out of my mouth. I become a caregiver to between 20-25 students every year. I am with them from 7:45 in the morning until 3:00 in the afternoon, 174 days for one year. I learn to tell by the look on their face or by the tone of their voice what emotion they are feeling, I give them funky nicknames, I go to their events outside of school, I have formed relationships and memories with these students, and I love them as if they were my own child. As a class, we become a family💗. When May rolls around, those students leave my classroom and I have an emptiness in me😢. Then comes August with a whole new group of students that are trying to fill the shoes of the ones that have left me. They don't know the rules, they are immature, I can't connect with them, and they are just not my angels from the year before. Amazingly, as the year goes by me, I start to make connections, I start to take their worries as my own, my family learns their names and we talk about them at the dinner table, they become a part of me, and they start to fill the emptiness that was left in me by the other class. In May they will leave me, and in August you can hear me saying, "There is no way I am going to make it the WHOLE year."