Like this:

The clock is ticking- ticking in my favor, I’m quick to add. Nine weeks left till I say goodbye to one school for two months and hello to another. Goodbye to my old classroom, hello to a beautiful brand new one. Goodbye to the twenty students I’ve been blessed with this year, hello to twenty more.. or twenty-two.. (or maybe up to thirty, with all these budget cuts flying our way. I had a dream it was forty, but thankfully I don’t put much stock in my dreams.)I’m willing and ready to say goodbye. This has been a long year.But the goodbye will definitely be tinged with more than a little nostalgia.This group of kids is incredibly special. You might be rolling your eyes and thinking that all teachers says that about their kids, but they don’t. Sure, every group is special in some way, but teachers are realistic. Some groups are nightmares. Teachers make the nightmares as pleasant as possible, but they’re still nightmares. 

Not this one, though. Not by a long shot. I wish I could take you by the hand and let you sit in a corner of my classroom for an hour or so, just to see what I’m talking about. You’d probably notice right away how well-behaved and well-mannered they are. I wish I could take credit for that, but almost all of them came to me that way. And the ones that didn’t were thankfully quick to follow suit.

So what makes this group of kids so special?

- Their contagious happiness. They come in with bright smiles every morning (they know that they can’t come into Miss Moore’s class without a smile, but I don’t have to remind them very often). They remind me to smile, too. Not with their words, but with their happiness, love for life, and quirky sense of humor.  - Their story-telling. I suppose every first grader loves to tell stories, but this group does in particular. Nearly every day, even my shyest ones come up to me in any spare time they can find, and start telling me all about how their dog just had puppies, or how their little sister nearly caused a fire the night before, or how they saw a classmate at the store. I don’t always have time to listen, but I’ve learned to make time. I may be the only one in their lives who does.

- The way they always keep my stomach happy. At the beginning of the year when a few of the students brought me a random cookie or homemade gordita, I guess I over-exaggerated my enthusiasm. “Oh, I love it when friends bring me food in the morning! Yummmm!!” So now I think they have it in their heads that Miss Moore loves food (she does), and often bring baggies of whatever they have at home, from muffins to tamales to papaya. One boy’s dad just started working at a donut shop. He can’t stop talking about it, and loves to bring me whatever new thing his dad just learned to make. The other day, the kids earned lunch in my classroom, and I noticed him holding the tray with one hand and corrected him. “Oh, Miss Moore, it’s okay, because I help my dad in the donut shop, so I know how to do it.” I couldn’t help but laugh.

- Their enthusiasm and love for learning. The way they freak out over library books about crayfish and other random creatures or stories (and run into people in the hallways because they’re reading as they walk), and love sharing their knowledge with each other and any adult who will listen. The way they take me literally when I encourage them to bring things from home, like the other day when I told them they could bring props to represent their animal characters for a play, and one girl brought a turtle. A REAL turtle, in a little blue cage. Wow. Should have been more specific, I guess.

- Their kinesthetic learning style. Last year’s class was mostly visual. This year’s class is all about moving and touching. It’s hilarious. I taught both groups hand motions to remember intonation patterns for the different punctuation marks (eg., fist through the air for exclamation point), and the first group did it for a few weeks and then just relied on the visual cues in the text. Nope, not this group. Even now, I’ll test their reading and they’ll suddenly stop in the middle of the text and flail their arms around before moving on to the next sentence. And I learned quickly that if I don’t use hand motions for pretty much everything I teach, they forget it almost as quickly as I teach it. Oftentimes they can’t get the words out right, but they communicate the answers to me using the hand motions I taught them. It’s fun for me, a visual learner, to learn to get them up, get them moving, get them touching and feeling things… and to learn to enjoy those things myself.

- Their love and nurture for each other. The girls are all budding little mamas, and frequently come up to me during recess, deeply concerned about a classmate who hurt himself, even if the classmate recovered minutes ago and is now happily running around with his friends. I don’t have to remind them to help each other when someone falls or drops something. Usually, a stampede of five or more children come running to help, and I have to redirect them back to their chairs while thanking them for being so considerate.

- Their dedication to Miss Moore. I started to write poems and whatnot for the bilingual department, and even though it’s pretty much the same thing every week, they’re convinced I’m a real author. Right on up there with Dr. Seuss and Eric Carle, ha! I love it. They’re my biggest fans.

Yes, I’ll miss these kiddos. But the clock is ticking, and I’m definitely okay with that.

(They’d better still come by to give me hugs and flash their bright smiles at me next year, though!)

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