Almost done

Our Summer vacation is approaching, and has in fact started for the younger boys and for my students. I always find the last days tough ones to get through. Either I am reluctant to let the students move on, or I am counting the minutes for them to be out of my hands and back to their parents. We are not really working but tying up loose ends and taking care of getting materials turned in, lockers cleaned out and all assignments passed back to students.

This year is going to be an especially challenging break from students, because my team will be changing locations in the grade house (for one of my team, to another grade house), and I will personally be moving to two other classrooms. We are not supposed to make the move until after Summer School has ended and there are no work days provided for the move. We are not moving into empty rooms, but rooms occupied by another team of teachers that need to move into our rooms we are presently occupying. I am not looking forward to the move, although as far as materials go, I have already started moving materials into my new math room. The Science room move has proved to be a lot more disorganized, and so I will have to reorganize and relabel all of the cabinets and drawers.

Joe went to Raymond's school yesterday with Daniel and enjoyed lunch and an afternoon of games and ice cream making. Raymond and Daniel are both excited about not having school. We are working on planning a few shorter trips this Summer as gas costs are so high. We had originally started talking about a trip to Washington State, but as things have changed so drastically this Spring, we are reevaluating where we can get away to and for how long.

The natives are restless

Be it Raymond, counting the seconds until school is out, or the 85 eleven and twelve-year-olds waiting to end classes for, unbeknown to them, the boring doldrums of summer vacation. "Do we have to work the last week of school? The last day? The last hour?" I am always amazed by the level of excitement for the school year to end, for myself and my kids. My Summer list of things to do is growing to a point where I am excited to get Summer going so I can get to my home/life agenda as opposed to school always taking a big part of my day/week and attention.