School's Out for Summer!

Teaching is weird. It can be tough, disappointing, and frustrating, and then at the last moment the kids will pull your heartstrings and make it all feel better. We finished up school this afternoon, and for the past couple of days we have been having all kinds of final activities that make us forget that we have lived off bad food, lots of stress, and little sleep for the last five weeks by flashing inspiring pictures from the summer before us. Today, Martin, our very, very talented Curriculum Specialist, ended up final all-school meeting by repeating after him, "I am a teacher." Well, I guess I am.

Yesterday we administered our final assessments. This was probably one of the lowest points of my summer experience. Our goal this summer was for every student to score 80% on our final. We had been fairly close to this on our last quiz (85% class average), with the exception of one or two students, and I thought we had a shot of getting almost everyone over that 80%. So it was kind of heartbreaking to pull out the first final, from one of my usually high-scoring students, and to end up writing 60% on the page. This was followed by one 87% and then a series of 70s and 67s. My fifth period class did no better. The class average on the final was 75%. Not too bad, but I don't think it's really acceptable for these students, who were so well trained and eager to learn coming in. Despite my complaining earlier, there were no real behavior and nothing to hold them back except my own teaching. That was a bit of a blow to the confidence, and I was sort of shocked at how hard I took my students scores. It was the most depressed I have been in a while. Grading is not fun. It's difficult to give a hard working, motivated, and well behaved student a 58, but I was working off quiz scores, and this is what I had to do. It didn't make it much better when I noticed that my grades were much lower than their other teachers' grades.

I was expecting the last day of school today to be a bit chaotic, and it lived up to my expectations. During our first period, we had "Expo Day," during which all five of the students' teachers talked a little about what we had done that summer. The parents left after an hour, which left me with ten more minutes, and no activity to fill the time. A couple of the boys convinced me to put on "Hips Don't Lie" so that Edwin could dance (I had played it for them earlier during an activity). This led into most of the class gathering around my computer, searching through my music library and looking at photos of South Dakota. It was the first time I really realized the connection I had made with my students this summer. Later I visited my students in another class, and they gave me thank you cards, and they all wanted me to sign their "yearbook" pages that Mr. Webster had made for them. I didn't expect it, but I am sad (though also a little relieved) to see it end.


Here are a couple photos I took the other morning before students arrived. Hopefully there will be more photos coming the next couple days.

Here are the Most Valuable Mathletes from Week 3, our best quiz. The MVMs scored over 80%.


Room 106, ready to go for the school day: