I’m counting down the most memorable moments from my teaching career leading up to the one year anniversary of the day I moved on from my life as an educator.
Last month I wrote a post that explained how I came to be the Battle of the Books coach at my school. (Despite it all…I’m proud). Basically, I accepted the invitation to participate in the annual competition with two other private schools in the area. Each year, I was nervous for the kids as we prepared for the competition. But inevitably, the nervousness turned to pride because we won every year. For 7 years in a row. Minus the 2020-2021 school year when no extracurricular activities were taking place. We certainly didn’t want to mix the kids anymore than we had to, so the competition was cancelled that year.
This year, I was no longer the coach, or even at the school where I could impart wisdom to the team like I did last year when I was the principal and not directly involved in preparing the team. Even this year they won. I was still proud of them. And honestly, I hope it’s many more years before the winning streak ends. If I ever left a legacy there, the BOB team would be it.
I tried to find the picture I took one year when we had to evacuate the school because of a hurricane and impending flooding. The teachers and staff went to the school on a Sunday to empty file cabinets and move things off the floor. The river that was less than half a mile from our school that was fed into by a creek that ran directly behind our property was expected to flood as the result of Hurricane Florence. It had flooded two years earlier from Hurricane Matthew so we took the threat very seriously. I was given the BOB trophy to take home and keep safe. Jokingly I strapped it into the passenger seat of my car. That’s how seriously we took the competition. While I can’t find that picture, I do have several pictures of each year’s team holding the trophy after we had won it. Or, after we won and got to keep it. It was the same trophy that got passed around from year to year, or in our case, it was taken to the competition location and brought back to be placed again on the shelf.
This picture is from the first year, faces and name cards cropped out. Those are the hands of the kids from the inaugural team. They are all grown up now. Pretty sure they are out of college at this point. But I will still never forget that initial swell of pride I felt when the trophy was placed on the table in front of them declaring them the winner. They did good. And apparently I did too.
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