I just completed my last day of work and I am fully retired now. So I just wanted to answer the question about ending a chapter in your life, and, and, and all of those things that go with that. So, definitely ended a chapter in my life. Yesterday was my last day and it was a pretty emotional day. There was several things that happened during the week that were — that added to that.
It was quite interesting because I was — because I have 32 years of experience as a para in the school system and I’ve known a lot of people and I’ve done a lot of different roles. A lot of people just think I work with these high special needs kids, but I’ve done many, many things over the years and I’ve been in many teachers’ classrooms. With my students, I did captioning for hearing impaired students for a long time. I worked in emotionally impaired classrooms. There were lots and lots of things that I did.
So, um, I was invited to the staff meeting which normally I wouldn’t attend but because they wanted to honor us and there were seven of us, so our principal had asked for a memorable moment, which was really kind of hard to come up with one moment out of 32 years that I really wanted to talk about. I wanted someone else to share. So, but she — when it was my turn to go up, and she clearly had no idea what I did. It – she’d really never been in my classroom. We had never really had a conversation. She knew my name and that was about it. So, it was very interesting as she went and told these — this roomful of people where two thirds of the people knew me way better than she did, telling them what I did and telling them about me. And it was, it was, it was pretty uncomfortable. And I just wanted it to go quick, and it went quick, and she mispronounced my name when she called me up to begin the —
So, but the funny thing was that — and the rewarding thing was that night, a friend of mine who’s an English teacher invited me to go out to a brew pub, our local brew pub, and — after school and have lunch in, and, and have a, a drink. And so, and there were many of the people that I had gone out with before, many — most, a lot of them English teachers, but different people. It was, it was pretty much an open group and there were probably ten or twelve of us there outside, sitting outside enjoying a cider and some lunch, it was really nice.
But the, the people collectively were way more angry than I was about the way this, this honor, you know, this, this ceremony went honoring me and the other people. They were absolutely furious. And one person said, “I almost stood up and said ‘That’s not her name’ and told about you,” but they were never invited to share anything. And they all could have done a much better job than, than she did. So that was, that was a really sweet moment at the end, at the end of my time to, to, to hear that sort of validation from my friends, my true friends from, from my workplace.