Vienna Calling: All good things...

Ultra Refined :-)

You're going to have to pardon me. I'm going through that thing that all teachers go through at the end of a school year. That crippling cacophonous mix of conflicting emotions that signal the end of a year spent completely immersed in the lives of a group of children. You'll have to give me an extra special dose of grace for my nostalgic reminiscing because I'm experiencing for the first time the "agony and the ecstasy" as it were tenfold as I experience it for the first time at an international school.

My students...fantastic, brilliant, wonderful, challenging, and unique as each and every one of them is...are moving on. Some of them will put up with me harassing them for hugs in the hallway for years to come...but some of them are leaving for parts unknown to far flung corners of the world and I know that I'll never see the again.

Did it matter?

Did those lessons count?

Did she actually learn how to convert measurements or was that an utter failure?

Will he keep writing?

Will she still be reading voraciously?

Did I mean anything to them?

Will they remember me?

These questions and more rattle around in our brain with each final hug and hurried goodbye. They run out of your classroom and into the next chapter of their lives and we as teachers are left completely drained. Emotionally, physically, existentially (ha!) we are like balloons with all the air let out.

And we love it.

We love it because even though we may never know the answer to those harrowing questions we know that somewhere, to someone, it has made a difference. And we know that even if that is not completly true...that these students have made a difference to us and in us. At the close of every year it's we who learn the most lessons and who change and whose hearts grow more and more. I have been a teacher for five years now. A piece of my heart is carried in the growing bodies of over a hundred different amazing children now.

To each of them...thank you.

I've used this quote before and I'll use it again (you really can't stop me from where you are anyways)..."No one is told any story but their own."(C.S. Lewis). I am grateful beyond words for the students that keep in contact. I get pretty near giddy at the prospect of catching up with and emailing and chatting with my former charges and hearing about what they are up to and their current struggles and triumphs.

But I'm at peace with the stories that I will never hear the final chapters of. Because I know that these hearts are in God's hands and that it is only through God's grace and wisdom that I was a participant in a chapter or their own fantastic unfolding life.

So goodbye to my new old students. You enter now into that special place in my heart where we can be friends forever even if we never meet again. You are forever in my prayers and my dreams for you are big.

And to the teachers that shaped me into who I am today...thank you. We may never bump into each other but if we ever do I would love to tell you all about what you've done for me.

And so here ends another chapter in my journey. A year of firsts and lasts and tears and joy. Of holding on and forming bonds and letting go and saying goodbye. I can't wait to return to America to tell those of you praying for me about all that God is doing...and I'm so sad to leave behind my family in Vienna even for a short while.

Don't we serve a great God?

Annnnnd.....pictures to reward you for dealing with my emotional end of the year teacher nostalgia fest!