3年生の皆さん、さよなら

Today was the graduation ceremony for this year's 3rd year students. For me it was a fresh experience, not only because it's my first time at a Japanese ceremony, but also that whenever I have attended a graduation ceremony in the past, I have always been among the graduates. I also finally understand the sense of pride parents/teachers have to see their kids graduate and why my mom was always so gung-ho about graduation.

The ceremony itself was pretty long, but there were a number of speeches from the principal, PTA president, and a city Board of Education member. There were also a number of songs that the class performed as part of the "Parting words" section of the ceremony. It was during this part when one of the girls, a student that I have become pretty close to, was addressing the crowd and started to cry uncontrollably. I had to stop watching her because I knew if I kept watching her I might have lost it myself.

Even though I've only been teaching these kids for about 7 months, and I'm sure I'll see most of them again some day down the road, in the end as all the students walked through a crowd of all the students, teachers and parents out the doors of the school for the last time as middle school students, I couldn't help but feel as if a tiny piece of me was being lost.