I herded the last kindergarteners onto the bus and passed through a shower of bubbles amid cheers from the crowd of teachers who had gathered to send off our students for summer vacation. After prompting kids to sit down and feeling like I was playing whack-a-mole, I realized I wasn’t going to win this game. I left the bus in defeat and just as I turned to see the entire bus standing to wave goodbye, someone caught my eye on the sidewalk. Was that H? What was she doing at our school?

As I stood wondering, I watched as H’s mom turned to a staff member. I’m really good at reading lips, so I knew she asked, “Where can we find Ms. Carey?”

All at once, I knew why H had made the trek down the hill from her school to our school. All week, I had sat by and watched as students popped into rooms to share gifts, notes, and hugs with their teachers, showing their gratitude for the year we were about to end. I watched as seniors from the high school, clad in their caps and gowns, walked the halls of their elementary school one more time, hugging their teachers along the way. It is always in these tiny moments, year after year, that I miss the connections that come from being a classroom teacher.

But there was H., standing with puffy eyes, in her fifth-grade t-shirt, looking for me. I had been H’s first-grade teacher during Covid, when I spent half my day teaching first graders online. That year was a challenging one, as we worked to adapt to online teaching. That year, I learned a great deal from the first graders who filled my screen each day. Children can learn to read, write, and do math from the comfort of their own living rooms. Perhaps the greatest lesson I learned was that a community could form via Zoom.

I walked towards H and wrapped her in a hug before I even said hello.

As the final bus pulled away and the echoes of summer cheers faded, I gave H one more hug before sending her off to start her summer vacation. The magnitude of this visit has stayed with me, knowing I mattered in the life of a child. It doesn’t get better than that.