I am a big believer in recording memories because memories are like stars, shining in the darkness of your life. Memories help you to keep going. Wednesday and Thursday I said goodbye to my kids. We had parties during the last thirty minutes of our period. Perhaps you've heard me talk about how much I love fourth period, but how much I hate it at the same time. It was a really large class and there were some "gentlemen" in there who relished making my life a little more difficult than it needed to be. Of all my classes though, they are the ones, when it came to saying goodbye that were the most demonstrative.

I was standing there listening to E tell me that he hoped I'd be his tenth grade teacher, but that he wouldn't be any better for me in tenth grade than he was in ninth, when G came over and said, "Oh my gosh, Ms. Jackson, what is over the door? (imagine Will Smith talking, and you will have an idea of what this sounded like.)" There was a sign, written on notebook paper, taped over the door saying "We love you. We gonna miss you." Gavin went to get the sign, "Ms. Jackson! It says, 'we love you, we gonna miss you!' isn't that sweet! Who would do that?" He then proceeded to get the class quiet (which is no easy task.) and said, "Listen up! This is our last time with Ms. Jackson. Ya'll need to thank her, and you need to give her a hug goodbye!" On that note, I was group hugged by all the boys in 4th period that had given me such a hard time. In my head, all I could hear was my professor saying, "That's not appropriate", but what are you going to do? That was the closest to crying I came at school.

I wanted to write this story down, so even when I feel like I'm not connecting with a group of kids, I can remember that maybe somehow I've connected with them most.