Poem

JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL IS A TIME FOR YEARNING

Junior high school is a time of yearning

For what's ahead and what is left behind:

Neither child nor adult, but burning

Unrestrained with love and fear combined.

Now that we must leave, we have the pleasure

Of moving one step nearer who we are,

Knowing that we lose the equal treasure,

Bit by bit, of leaving dreams ajar.

How lucky we have been this awkward moment,

Shifting from the shade into the sun,

To have this school as our communal parent,

Guiding us as well as you have done!

More than skills improved or knowledge gained

Are intellects inspired and gifts unchained.

THEACHER ARE THE SCULPTORS OF YOUNG LIFES

Teachers are the sculptors of young lives.

How fortunate our child was shaped by you!

A year in your class taught him how to study,

No longer lost in thoughts that he finds new,

Knowing now the paths each thought derives.

Your love and strong solicitude embody

Other virtues our child has tried on, too.

Under your good guidance hope survives.

THE PRIDE I FEEL IS NOTHING LIKE A PRIDE

The pride I feel is nothing like the pride

Of one who's made it through the thousand gates

That stand between one's hopes and one's degree.

How much have you learned? And what inside

Equals your diploma, which equates

Grades and credits with a sanguine sea?

Remember: Your achievement is not only

A tribute to the things that you have done,

Determined as you have been to succeed.

Underneath the sign is still the story,

A tale of what through learning you've become,

The pride of those who may your record read

Even as you've ravished shores unknown.

WE ARE UPWARD BOUND

We are upward bound, the worlds bright future,

The generation that will not betray

Its noblest dreams, the things that we’ve been taught here,

The ways of peace and brotherhood and love.

So as we make this final farewell gesture

And take our leave on graduation day,

Let us thank the teachers that we’ve found here,

Who must each day be what they hope to prove.

What a gift you’ve given us yourselves!

The best in you, that you might be a sign

To us of what the best in us can be:

Loving, smart, hardworking, fair, and kind.

Your temperaments the well-wrought text that tells

Us more than any lesson you assign.

We become the people that we see

And treasure long the good we leave behind.

WE'VE BEEN TOGETHER SINCE WE WERE

We've been together since we were

Just barely more than babes,

Holding onto Mommy's hand,

Missing two front teeth.

Some of us now have to wear

A bra and some to shave,

Adults in what our hearts demand,

Still children underneath.

Together we learned how to read,

Together learned to play,

To add and multiply our friends,

To give and to receive.

Our teachers taught us how to lead,

To put our tears away,

To separate our means and ends,

To work and to achieve.

And now we step across a line;

Our childhood is gone.

Soon, just like a morning dream,

The memories will fade.

But if we turn out good and kind,

Rejoicing in the sun,

We'll know to thank these sheltered years

Where our first joys remain.