A bitter sweet goodbye

Tomorrow is it, unless you want to count today as it.  What is “it”?  Well, “it” is my last day of work.  No, not my last day for two months until school starts back in August, but my last day for a while.  A while back Trey and I talked about me being a stay at home mom while the boys were young and being around to spend quality time with them.  I told him that was something I wanted to do and a few weeks ago I resigned.

It’s hard to believe that my students left today and tomorrow I will go into work for the last time at Senatobia Middle School to tie up some loose ends.  I have been a teacher in the public school system for seven years now and no two years have been alike.

When I started teaching in the fall of 2005 Trey and I lived in Jackson.  I honestly went into the classroom on day 1 thinking that all kids grew up just like me.  I grew up in a house with a mom and dad.  My mom stayed home while my dad worked.  We sat down to eat supper every night, had family conversations, they helped me with my homework, kissed and tucked me in bed, took me to church, loved and supported me my entire life.  I was soon welcomed into the “real world” that not everyone has a life like I did. 

I have seen kids cry because they don’t have food to eat at home, cry because it’s the anniversary of a death of a parent, cry because they can’t see their Daddy if he doesn’t pay child support.  I have seen kids literally stand up at lunch with their faces buried into their lunch tray on Monday because they didn’t have anything to eat all weekend.  Children have told me they were scared the night before because they heard gun shots outside their window.  Or they were scared because momma never came home last night and daddy is in jail.  I have seen kids steal napkins from the cafeteria to take home to use as toilet paper because they don’t have any at home.  I have watched kids wear the same clothes to school three days in a row because that’s all they had.  I have hugged kids, bandaged boo boos, cheered them on when no one else would, told them I believed in them, and tried to impact their lives in a way that they would always remember Mrs. Lamar.  Did I succeed?  I don’t know.  I hope to God that I changed a few lives along the way and impacted someone positively. 

Teachers don’t teach for the money.  Lord knows I never made much.  I spent a lot of money that Trey doesn’t even know about buying school supplies for kids who never had them.  I love the teaching profession and hope to one day get back in to it in some degree.  In the last seven years I have made some wonderful friends that are near and dear to my heart.  There were many many tough days that I didn’t think I could stand one more second and they encouraged me.  I will truly miss so many of them and the daily conversations and laughs we shared.  For now I am retiring as Mrs. Lamar and going to be momma to my precious Ford and soon to be John Brantley. 

My first class

My last class