Last day of School

On the last day of school, which I termed "Friday, Cry-day", everyone was emotional. We had the first hour of class with our PBG, our Facebook group that we were closest with. We took so many pictures and signed each other shirts. One of my students gave me a flower crown that she made with fake flowers. More hugs than I thought I could handle. We also had to take down the decorations in the classroom, leaving it barren once more. We picked a song for the karaoke at the end of the morning- "1000 miles" by Vanessa Carlton.

My kids made a video slide show of the program too, which they showed me in class. They are so sweet!

The second hour, we had our CSG, so for me I had 15 different kids. They helped take down the rest of the decorations. We had tied ribbon to some pipes on the ceiling, so those had to come down. Something that blew me away: a student pulled a BOX CUTTER out of his pocket so nonchalantly and handed it to the tall kid who was cutting the ribbons for us. I asked him why he had it, and he answered me like it was the most obvious thing, "to sharpen pencils." I told him that in the U.S. he would have been kicked out of school for that, and classrooms have pencil sharpeners in them. They were very surprised by that!

The final 2 hours was a karaoke/dance party. We of course had to dance the Cha-Cha Slide one more time! We taught it to them earlier in the program because the words of the song tell you how to do the dance, so it was  listening exercise. All the teams did their cheers again, and all did karaoke. We coaches danced too, at the front for them. There was a dance circle of course.

The Wednesday before, we had a talent show. These kids were amazing! Playing guitar and singing, showing art they had made, and one kids did capoiera, which is like dance-fighting that the slaves did on sugar cane plantations. Very popular in the Northeast region where sugar cane was grown.Wikipedia page about Capoeira, with a video! 

Anyway, back to the last day. More kids playing guitar, like I said, basically a music party at the end. Everyone signing shirts. I had kids that I didn't know asking me to sign, so I just wrote "Emily" with a heart. They only had to learn 9 of the coaching teaming, but we had 96 students total!! They were all very sweet of course.

Finally, the time was there, 12:00 p.m., noon. The End of the program. So many group hugs with Team Greyhounds,  then hugging each one again and again. I didn't cry, and I was worried they would think I was heartless or didn't love them enough! After, we jumped in our van to make a get-away. Rip the bandaid off fast, I guess.

Then time for packing! I also wrote a Nebraska or Omaha post card for each of my team members, so I wrote those to give at breakfast the next day.