Today I had the opportunity, along with one of my Assistant Principals, to visit our former students during their lunchtime at the middle school.  We left with full buckets and rock star status.

This particular group had their fair share of challenges while they were with us during elementary school.  They truly define the phrase “blood, sweat and tears”. We love them with our whole hearts and while we knew they were ready to move on to middle school (and quite honestly, we were ready for them to move on), a part of us still had our fingers crossed that they would be okay.

We arrived to the cafeteria as they were coming in for lunch.  They spotted us before we spotted them and the welcome we received was priceless.  If there is ever a doubt about whether the time and effort in investing in relationships with students is worth it, this moment proved that it is beyond worth it.

We absolutely disrupted their lunch time routine. Thankfully I am friends with the middle school principal and she also believes in growing successful, society contributing citizens, so she overlooked the disorder we were causing. I should also add that she had a board member visiting at this time and didn’t bat an eye when we made our entrance.  She was so thankful we had come to visit our students!

We were given immediate rock star status by the students.  The amount of hugs, love, high fives and smiles we received in a 10 minute time span will fill my emotional bucket for months.  The toughest of kids hugged us, some held on for a bit. They are happy, thriving and well on their way to being successful middle school students.  I am proud to say that our staff, their parents and our community  all had a hand in shaping these human beings into positive people.

A lot of them asked if we would come back again, we assured them that we would. Many of them requested that their former teachers come to visit next. We will just need to work out the small detail of covering classes K-5th from 10:25-10:55.  I am sure we can work something out. 😉

At one point I was standing in the back of the cafeteria watching my Assistant Principal walk by each table (she was worried she would miss seeing someone) and thought to myself, they make us feel like rock stars when they are the true stars.  Love this job, love my students and love my staff.  Once a Wildcat, always a Wildcat.