Leaving

I have only 2 days left here at the school, and it's hard not to tear up when I look at the boys. I will miss them more than they can possibly know. It seems that every day now, I meet a new boy with some amazing hidden talent or interest. You already know about Chance and his story writing. I published a book for him with his collected stories and it stretched to 14 pages single-spaced. Since then he has written at least five more, and he has spurred a wave of followers who dutifully bring me their stories for correction every evening. What they really want is for me to go clack-clack-clack and turn their stories into printed pages. I’ve had to limit most of them to one story a piece, otherwise I would do nothing but type at my computer all day. Then there is the boy who dances like Michael Jackson, despite growing up in a village with no electricity and only catching snippets of his moves on video. I couldn’t have presented my workshops without the Class Seven boy who is a technical genius to set up my audio visual equipment. I’m told he built a functioning toy car and a working lamp out of junk he found around the school. There is another boy who collects acronyms, and brought me a notebook filled with carefully printed letters and their full forms asking me “What is the meaning of B.C.? And A.D.?” I am disappointed to think that I won’t get to know all 238 of them in the same way. I think the feeling is compounded by the fact that I don't get to go back to my U.S. boys again this fall. I've been missing them this whole summer. Every time I get out the photos to show kids here, there are my Fitz boys in their uniforms, learning in my class or on field trips to the zoo or a college. Despite all the grieving I’ve done for leaving Fitz, I don’t think it’s truly sunk in that I’m really not going back. I find myself thinking about decorations for my classroom and new procedures I want to try in September. I'm really going to miss being a teacher.