Today officially wraps-up my first full school year covering education in Warren County.

Since August, I have spent a lot of time at the schools meeting students, teachers and administrators and it has been a great year seeing all the amazing things students are doing in both public and private schools.

One of my favorite memories from the year was the hour or so I spent with the improv class at St. Al. The incredibly talented students took a lump of clay that had been turned into a medal for the spooky sprint and built scene after hilarious scene based around these items.

A few months later, I had the chance to see some of those exact same students absolutely steal the stage in the school’s production of Peter Pan.

Another highlight was meeting the students who make up Team 456-Siege Robotics and chronicling their run to worlds. When I went and talked to them about qualifying, the mentor was brought to tears just talking about his team and how proud he was of his students for qualifying after the team had fallen just short multiple times in the past.

It was a raw moment and great to see how much these students and the people helping them care.

I also had the pleasure of meeting some incredible teachers from every school in the district when highlighting the teacher of the year nominees. Any student is lucky to have these teachers and Warren County is blessed that these men and women have chosen to work here.

While many of the stories I did featured groups or projects, there were also times when I sat down with individual students who had accomplished great things. Two students will be attending military academies starting this summer and I had the pleasure of meeting them both.

The four seniors named STAR student are an impressive highly intelligent group and the teachers they chose as STAR teacher are the types of educators any younger teacher should hope to become.

One of my personal favorite stories this year was on a nursing student from Warren Central who was pursuing the field after caring for his dad who died from cancer. You will hopefully be able to read more about his story in the coming weeks and how this program offered by VWSD and Hinds changed his life forever.

Students launched rockets, built robots, designed websites, raised fish and a lizard and much more. It was great year to be able to stand on the sidelines and tell the stories of all that happened this year.

So congratulations to the Class of 2018 and in the wise words of Mark Twain and the theme of the speeches at my own high school graduation, “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

Have a fun and safe summer.

  Brandon O’Connor is a staff writer for The Vicksburg Post. You may reach him at brandon.oconnor@vicksburgpost.com.