The Last Day I Didn't Expect to Cry: A love letter to the end of the year, and the class that reminded me why I started

It's been a week since the last bell rang. I'm still thinking about it...

I almost made it.

I held it together through first period. During second period, I could feel it building, that particular ache that only comes in May, in 8th grade, when you realize you're not just saying goodbye to a school year. You're saying goodbye to them. For good. They don't come back next fall. They leave the grade. They leave the building. They leave you.

And then one class looked at me, and I just… didn't make it.

I cried. They cried (well, the girls did). We cried.

The thing about 8th grade nobody tells you

When people romanticize teaching, they usually talk about the lightbulb moments: the student who finally gets it, the essay that surprises you, the kid who comes back years later and says you changed their life.

What they don't talk about is the leaving.

8th grade teachers don't get the quiet continuity that other grade levels do. We pour into these kids for a year, and then we watch them walk out of a building they'll likely never walk back into as students. It's not a handoff. It's a send-off. And there's a difference.

Every May, I am startled all over again by how fast it comes.

What I told them — and what I meant

That year, I didn't just say goodbye. I said thank you.

I told them the truth: I was tired. We were all tired. May is a different kind of tired. It's not the exhausted-desperate-for-winter-break tired of December. It's the kind that settles into your bones when you've given everything you have to something that mattered.

But I also told them this:

A class that can remind me of my "why" is always a win for the year.

And I meant it. Because that group did that. In the middle of a year full of ups and downs, laughs and frustrating moments, lessons that landed and lessons I'll redesign before I teach them again, they reminded me why I chose this work.

I thanked them for being open to being taught. For being willing and eager to stretch. For never being afraid to diplomatically push back, question, and say, "Let us consider this…"

Never being afraid to think out loud and challenge respectfully is not a small thing. That's a room full of thinkers. A room full of students who trusted me enough to engage, to challenge, to be genuinely present in the learning. You cannot manufacture that. You earn it, and so do they.

Tired isn't the opposite of fabulous

I was tired.

And it had been a fabulous year with my students.

Those two things lived together that May, and I've stopped trying to separate them. The tired is proof of the investment. The fabulous is proof it was worth it.

So to the class that broke through my composure on the last day: thank you. Thank you for making this feel like more than a job. Thank you for letting me walk beside you this year, even when the walk was uphill, even when we disagreed, even when we had to slow down and find our footing together.

You leave this building. But what happened in that room, what we built together, goes with you. And it stays with me.

💜💚 Teaching: The Real — Real texts. Real topics. Real thinking.