Last School Day

A strange and emotional day today. The last proper school day, tomorrow we just have prizegiving in the cathedral and then a party back at school. No lessons today, I taught my last lesson on Thursday, the girls were all out on trips on Friday. I got some lovely presents and cards from some of the girls, one of them who is leaving even wrote all her teachers really sweet notes about how much she would miss us and what great teachers we are (that was the point I was closest to crying today!), I'll be hanging on to that to remind me when I'm finding it tough to get used to my new school.

Today we had final assembly, which included all those little traditions I have become used to over the last 10 years. Every school has their own traditions and you become rather attached to them. I was determined not to break down and kept biting my lip to keep back the tears. I had to go up and get a bunch of flowers (we already got presents at the staff leaving do over a week ago now). There are so many of us leaving this year with the school merging, that it was nice not to have too much attention on me, but we all got our acknowledgment and farewell. I coped quite well even though loads of the girls were crying, in fact there was some quite loud sobbing! I did ok until we got to the school prayer and hymn, when I was struggling to keep singing. Then just when everyone was getting very emotional the fire alarm went off! It gave us all a chance to recover ourselves whilst waiting on the tennis courts to discover it was just a fault with the system, though some have suggested it was the ghost of the first headmistress (she wouldn't be happy with the merger and the school going co-ed!), I'm not sure about that but it was certainly strange timing to happen right in the middle of the school hymn.