I was back stage watching. I really wasn't involved other than I was an extra set of hands.

My K3 students put on their graduation show and it was marvelous. There was so much action backstage. Teachers putting piles of make up on each student, adjusting costumes and asking students to be quiet. No one really had an opportunity to see the other two sister kindergarten's performances. We were too focused on our own students this year.

I don't think I can explain the scale of these events my kindergarten puts on. The students rehearse for months. They dance and dance and dance. There was to be a component of a choir, but it got canceled because of all of the swine flu scares.

Each year they choose a theme. Last years performance was all about getting married and having a baby that would go to kindergarten. It was cute, but this year they really outdid themselves. They based all of their dances on traditional Chinese music. One of the students was this teacher/professor of sorts who was introducing his student to different things. They had him wave a massive paint brush and had a video of someone writing Chinese calligraphy. The students ran around under massive red lanterns with magenta-coloured feathered fans. Several students did the splits and showed off their flexibility. They had a massive lengths of blue satin to represent rivers and students dressed to be fishermen with paddles and straw hats. One group of students did a lantern dance and when the lights were dimmed you could see that the lanterns were lit with glow sticks. And at the end off this incredible routine one of the smallest students climbed up on top of a pyramid of his peers and stood up perfectly straight and he didn't fall. He stood until the curtain closed.

And when the curtain closed, I clapped so hard. And I cried. I was so proud of these kids, my students. I had taught them for 1.5 years and even in that short time, they had grown so much. And this crazy and extravagant routine was the the end of their kindergarten years. I was proud to have been a part of their lives.

I do think that it is going to get harder as the years I spend at this kindergarten go by. Last years students were wonderful kids but they were only taught one semester by me. This up-coming school year, I'll see students I started teaching when they were three years old move into their final year of kindergarten. And hopefully I'll get to stand back stage and applaud them for all of the wonderful things they had achieved.