Open Forum

Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes and groves,
And ye that on the sands with printless foot
Do chase the ebbing Neptune and do fly him
When he comes back; you demi-puppets that
By moonshine do the green sour ringlets make,
Whereof the ewe not bites, and you whose pastime
Is to make midnight mushrooms, that rejoice
To hear the solemn curfew; by whose aid,
Weak masters though ye be, I have bedimm'd
The noontide sun, call'd forth the mutinous winds,
And 'twixt the green sea and the azured vault
Set roaring war: to the dread rattling thunder
Have I given fire and rifted Jove's stout oak
With his own bolt; the strong-based promontory
Have I made shake and by the spurs pluck'd up
The pine and cedar: graves at my command
Have waked their sleepers, oped, and let 'em forth
By my so potent art. But this rough magic
I here abjure, and, when I have required
Some heavenly music, which even now I do,
To work mine end upon their senses that
This airy charm is for, I'll break my staff,
Bury it certain fathoms in the earth,
And deeper than did ever plummet sound
I'll drown my book.

If you are a creative thinker and want to share specific memories from your program use "Thanks for the Memories" a la Bob Hope as he ended many many of his shows over the years.

Take a look at Prospero's speech from "The Tempest".

my favorite end is season/year presentation. 

Warren

A slide show of past performances and students leading up to the current students.  Include pictures of you starting out and through the years.  The kids will love it, if you have time to put it together.  Congratulations on your retirement

Congratulations on a great run!  I know there is nothing more costly yet rewarding than investing in the lives of those who come behind us.

This song always comes to mind for me when we close a production; simple but it is meaningful to me.

THE CURTAIN FALLS - Bobby Darin

In some years my "good-bye" to our seniors at our end-of-year awards dinner/party is a dramatic reading (complete with character voices) of the last chapter of A.A. Milne's The House at Pooh Corner.  It surprises the audience at first, because they dismissively think it's a story "for little kids."  Pretty quickly, however, they come to see levels in the piece that they couldn't possibly have seen when they were children, and there's rarely a dry eye in the house by the time I finish.  (Sometimes I have a problem getting through the last few lines without choking up!)  After the reading, I usually add a personal statement along the lines of, "To our seniors, as you leave us, it is my wish that wherever you go, and whatever happens to you along the way, you will always take with you enough of a child-like imagination so that you, too, can always go to the top of that forest and play with that little bear."

Since the piece is Christopher Robin's farewell to the animals of the Hundred Acre Wood, it could work for a teacher's retirement, too.

Congratulations on your retirement!

Great suggestions already. Love the House at Pooh Corner suggestion, as well as the Prospero speech.

For fun, you could do a medley of 'Goodbye' songs from musicals. If they're ones you've done with your students even better. There's 'Goodnight and Thank You' from 'Evita', 'The Goodbye Song' from 'Shrek'...and that's all I've got today. :)

Whatever you do, I'm sure it'll be great!

Great suggestions so far. Here's another to throw into the ring. We want you to have a plethora to choose from.

If there are any of your former students you're in contact with it'd be really fun, and probably pretty emotional, to have them recount a favorite moment from being in your class and/or club. Your seniors could take charge of editing the video footage and "surprise" you with the montage

Ok so this might be a little chessy but it is the type of send off I would like. Gather one or two pictures from all the shows you have done and show them under the theme to one or two of the shows. 

Congrats on the work that you have done to touch lives and bring creativity into the world.

Kudos to you in ADVANCE for believing you could get through that speech on the day of!