Last Day of School

My first year in Taiwan, I must admit, I got a little teary eyed when I lined up my preschool class to go home for the last time. It had been a hard, but rewarding, year and I had put a lot of effort into making my class the best that it could be. I loved each and every one of those kids. One of my favourite memories was when I was telling my 21 kids that I soon would no longer be their teacher. My most difficult student, an aggressive four year boy who had joined us halfway through the year, immediately piped up, "But I love you Ms. Hurdman!" (in English I might add!).

This year's last day felt like any other day. Part of the reason was because I knew I was still going to see them next week, even if it wasn't as their teacher, and the other part was because I had not invested as much of myself into them. They were a good little class and had progressed very quickly in the short time I had with them, but I never connected emotionally with them as I had with other classes. This is probably due to the fact that only one of them spoke any English. In any case, the last day proceeded without fanfare.

I did, however, forget to send home their progress reports. Oops. The school secretary even asked me if they were in the kid's bags as we were lining them up to go and I said yes because I thought that I had seen my TA pack them. It wasn't a big deal, because, as I said, they're all coming back next week anyways, but it was still a little embarassing.

Michael's class was doing a fantasy unit this past month, and had a dress-up party with all the parents for the last day. May dug through some boxes and found a prince's costume that she had designed and had made for her son over ten years ago. Since Michael had said that he wanted to be a king for the party, it worked out well.


Michael and I made the crown ourselves (obviously). He chose the colour. I cut it out and he decorated it with a package of dragon stickers that his grandma had sent him from Canada.

When I got to his classroom after saying goodbye to my class, the party had already been going on for over a half hour. There was tonnes of food brought in by the parents, and the kids were all going crazy while the parents chatted with each other or took pictures. It was also a furnace in there. I lasted about ten minutes, then just grabbed a plate of food and Michael and headed back to my classroom. Michael was glad to get out of the heat, and he always likes skipping out on nap time, so he was happy to join me in cleaning up my classroom.

All in all, a pretty uneventful last day...