KHS memories

I've spent the last year working at Kestrel Heights School, a 6-12 charter school in Durham. It's really wanting to write this post that spurred my launch of this blog, as referenced earlier -- it's personal to me, and doesn't really fit the idea of Boy, n: A noise with dirt on it being Leo's baby book.

Friday morning was the 8th grade awards ceremony. It was one of those events where everybody gets something, so you can think of it as a "real" awards ceremony or not as you wish. The whole 8th grade staff helped present the certificates. It was really the first good chance I'd had to bring up the news of my departure to the 8th graders since Kirstin got her offer from School A. I didn't make it through without crying. When the last awardee was asking me not to cry, it only made things worse.

The following night was a smaller awards ceremony for students in all grades designed to honor the students of the year. I presented the 11th grade award, and the recipient was crying afterward. There are several students I've had this year that I'll miss tremendously. Some of them I would have missed anyway, as they were returning to the public school system for high school.

There was yet another awards ceremony Tuesday morning on the last day of school. It's a standing offer to students in my core classes (read: non-electives) that the student with the highest academic average for the year in each class period gets a book of their choice. This year's winners chose Twilight, by Stephanie Meyer; The Golem's Eye, by Jonathon Stroud, and Stardust, by Neil Gaiman. (The last student actually allowed me to pick for her, sort of -- she didn't know what she wanted, and I took a good guess based on other things I'd seen her read during the year.)

Tomorrow is the next game night at my friend Rick's, and there's a parent of somebody who would have been a student of mine next year that I think will want more details than I could comfortably talk about on Saturday.

We're going to try to go to Sunday's Durham Bulls game, if it isn't sold out. It's the only thing I asked about for Father's Day.