Window of Opportunity

I have spent the past school year trying to teach my students everything they need to know. From addition to subtraction, from sounding out words to reading paragraphs, from capitalization to punctuation, from nouns to verbs, from rocks to plants, from pilgrims to maps, from raising their hands to speak to keeping their hands and feet to themselves, from walking in a straight line to sitting quietly. Today I stopped teaching them and they left the room much different people than they were a year ago. They are going to 2nd grade and that makes me nervous. Nervous that maybe in the course of the school year I forgot to teach them something they needed to know. Nervous that they won't be ready for 2nd grade. This is what I imagine a parent feels when they drop their child off at college for the first time. The feeling that my window of opportunity for shaping and preparing them for the next level has passed. The feeling that I've done the best that I can and now I must simply watch. That's where the similarities end though. For another window of opportunity is just now opening to a whole new class of students. And now I have experiences that have prepared me to better help this new class.