It has been a pleasure

(Sunshine and rainbows for graduation day!)

This afternoon, Peter's first crop of students are graduating.  He was their teacher during an exhausting and intense year, and he grew a lot along side his students.  I wasn't prepared for how hard that first year would be.

As the partner of a new teacher, it's hard to relate the struggles.  When Peter and I both worked in offices, the pace of our days, the frustrations and the victories were all very similar.  "I got a new desktop!"  "The senior VP wrote me a congratulatory email!"

But I don't have a sense of the nonstop pace of his day, the constant "on" feeling he has when teaching, followed by lots of paper work, and then creating an exciting lesson plan for the next day.  Not to mention what it's like to spend six hours a day with teenagers (nor can I imagine how this is fun, but he swears it is).

Anyways, I thought this post was going to be a very sweet letter Garrison Keillor wrote to a student headed to Chicago for college.  And how one of Peter's favorite former students is headed to the University of Chicago in August.  But really this is a little graduation note to him, and how proud I am.  Congratulations, my dear.  It has been a pleasure to watch you become such a wonderful teacher.