EOY Reflecting

I don't know how I'm going to make it through the summer. I still have a week of school left, and I'm already bored! My room is packed, and I just found out I don't have anything else to do:
"May I invite a couple of students to help unpack after school tomorrow?"
"You don't want to unpack for another teacher, they'll do it next year."
Okay. I guess I'm done with the packing, until I move to New Jersey in July.

I've finished grading, and updating cumulative folders, and I've done everything I can so far to further my NJ certification, and I've found an apartment, and I have to stay at school for another hour and a half. I've already been surfing the web all day, and I've played all my games of Words with Friends, and I've planned the next six months of running, biking, and swimming. Everything else on my to-do list requires me to be elsewhere, such as cleaning my kitchen, cleaning my apartment, and cleaning my car.

This schedule is a little frustrating. The marking period ended Friday, so we can't give any graded work this week, and the kids know that. There are seven half days of school after grades close, and since they're half days, kids aren't going to take it seriously anyway. I've watched Finding Nemo 3 times in the last two weeks, and today we finished Rango and started Alvin and the Chipmunks: Something Something Werewolf. It's also been rainy, so I can't really take out my frustration by running. In fact, this week I'm resting for the triathlon on Sunday, so I can't really run too hard anyway.

I guess I deserve the chance to relax a bit. Judging by the end of year surveys I gave the kids, I was not as bad as I thought. Students almost universally said that I challenged them and helped them to understand. They said they learned a lot this year. Their suggestions were to incorporate more/better labs to engage them in the material, so they will put more effort into learning and less into messing around. I think I'm going to work much harder on student engagement next year.

I had to write an end of year reflection for TFA (always reflecting, always in charts on Word documents). I'll end with some highlights:

Write a brief narrative of your most vivid classroom memory (150 words or less). Take no more than 10 minutes to do this. (This is purposefully vague.  Be creative!  Write about your funniest, most moving, most fulfilling, most disastrous, most embarrassing, most shocking, or epiphanic moment).

I’ve been pretty nervous about telling my 7th graders I won’t be teaching them next year. I didn’t know what their responses would be. Would they be happy? Devastated? Somewhere in between? I announced it to one class yesterday afternoon and the other class this morning. My first class had the best response. After they got past the initial disappointment of discovering that my “big announcement” did not include pregnancy, they were genuinely happy for me. One student said, almost immediately, “Can we have a group hug?” As I tightly gripped the empty Tupperware container from the homemade Rice Krispy Treats I had used to bribe them into forgiving me, about a dozen students ran up to the front of the room in a heartwarming, awkward, multicolored group hug.

Summer Planning:

What I will do: Why I’m choosing to do this: By when: Look at entire curriculum before school starts I need to actually plan out the year, rather than copy-pasting someone else’s long term plan and flying by the seat of my pants Start of school Have lunch with Ms. P and Ms. S Learn what made these teachers so inspirational/challenging July 15 Read books I want to have a list of science fiction or science-related novels for my students to read—maybe for a capstone project? Start of school Plan labs ahead of time I need to figure out what supplies I’ll need, the timing of labs (to better engage students), and how I can get these supplies Start of school

If TFA-CT had a soundtrack, what song would be on the list?

There’s a story behind this one. In May 2011, I ran a half marathon. I was terribly undertrained, and a little burnt out from the training that I did do, and the race was awful. However, I had sat the night before and made a playlist, planning the entire 2+ hours of the race: first, pumping up music; then, zoning out music; lastly, keep moving despite the pain music. I had planned it so that just as I was approaching the finish line, I would get blasted with “Eye of the Tiger” to carry me to the end. Unfortunately, I was about 10 minutes slower than I had anticipated, and had to restart the song two times before I got there, but I finished with that song playing in my ears and fists raised victoriously in the air after 2 hours, 44 minutes, and 24 seconds of running (and some walking, and one bathroom break). This year has been a Rocky montage. There was some music, but mostly huge amounts of improvement and learning in a short time, with some really motivational people behind me.