Some graduating seniors at Hardin Valley Academy will receive congratulatory letters today from VIPs – themselves.
Letters the fifth-graders wrote to themselves
Teachers Sarah Bratton Brengle and Ginger Gill Griffin asked their fifth-grade students at Hardin Valley Elementary during the 2011-12 school year to write letters to their future selves with the promise that the letters would be delivered to them when they graduated in 2019.
Brengle and Griffin are delivering them to their former students at 4:30 p.m. today at Double Dogs, 10639 Hardin Valley Road. Graduation is at 8 p.m. Thursday, May 16, at Thompson-Boling Arena on the University of Tennessee campus.
Brengle said on Facebook that 2019 “seemed like a lifetime away at the time. Now I have a stack of letters waiting to be read by students that are off to do great things! I am so proud of them and would love to deliver these time capsules and congratulate them all!”
Anna Martin’s letter
One of the students, Anna Martin, asked if she could pick up her letter early because she had a conflict this afternoon. In the first paragraph of her letter, she asked herself if she still wanted to be an oncology nurse. What fifth-grader would make plans to become an oncology nurse? The answer comes near the end: “I hope that your cancer never came back.”
Brengle’s Facebook post also said: “This was my last 5th grade class that I taught, and I choose to remember them as the sweet 5th graders that wrote these letters. I am proud of you, class of 2019!”
Brengle said she and Griffin would love to see all the students and asked them to spread the word to their old classmates.
