In a heartbeat 2024 will come to a full stop and we’ll run straight into 2025 but before that weighty ball drops I’d like to reflect on the last very full 12 months. Towards that end, I selected 4 standouts posts of the 50 I wrote, each a fan favorite, highlighting some significance of my year. How about it, want to journey back with me? Oh, lets!
After 31 years of walking into this almost hundred year-old regal school building greeting all those doing the same, and spending a day discussing excellent texts and fostering student responses I find myself driving away one final time on this hot June day. The waterfall of complicated emotions I’ve felt since I turned in my resignation is Niagara Falls in proportion. Finding myself unable to say a lengthy farewell to students or colleagues, instead overcome by the whole convergence of my living and breathing within this mighty vocation, I slipped away, opting for an Irish goodbye.
From the mouth of babes often comes wisdom, as it did most certainly from my 12th graders this week. I asked them all to write a Valedictorian speech, if for no other reason than to let them ponder about their own valuable life lessons as well as their hopes and dreams. They did just that, and of course wowed me with their sageness. The following words are a collage of many speeches given by many students, all who made me cry and smile and be so very grateful to be gifted by their words. Cheers to the Class of 2024!
Nine Cent Girl 