All Grown Up

In the eleven years that I taught in the Upper School, I coached the Model Congress team at my school.  Each November, the team made a trip to Washington D.C., site of the real Congress, and participated in a contest to see if a Congress made up of high school students could do a better job than the actual Congress (hint: Yes, they could).

For most of the years that I made that trip with my team, JT joined us as the team mascot.  Here’s a picture of his first Model Congress trip, in 2006, when he was 6.  That year, I brought some babysitters to watch over the boy while I wrangled teenagers into bed at 1 am.  That’s the amazing J and C pictured with us at the Washington Zoo.

Over the years, we developed traditions during the trip.  Here we are in 2007, the year we started watching an IMAX movie on our annual visit.

When he was 8, he tried his hand at ordering room service.

And we visited the Jefferson Monument.

In 2009, we staged a Viking invasion of the Congress.

The year he was 10, we brought a friend and sought to avoid the scary beasts in the Museum of Natural History.

In 2011, we took a walk to the Martin Luther King, Jr. and Franklin D. Roosevelt monuments.

Our last trip was two years ago, when JT was in the 7th grade.  We messed around in Union Station and took a trip to the Zoo, as if things had come full circle.

Last year, I moved to the Middle School and a new coach took over the team and accompanied the students to the capitol.  This year, as a 9th grader, JT wrote a bill and he's joined the Model Congress team as a member.  His team mascot days are over.  Tomorrow, he heads south to D.C. with his teammates and plans to explore the city with his friends.  He has a good bill to propose and he’s practice debated.   He’s leaving his Mama at home, as befits a 14 year old learning to make his way in the world.  At home, I'll mark the quick passage of time and wonder just how fast the next few years will fly by.