God's lioness: EOY - End of the School Year

Tuesday, June 7, 2011

EOY - End of the School Year

Hello friends,
May God bless each and every person reading this sentence! In Jesus' Name. Amen
For anyone who has ever wondered what a teacher feels and thinks at the end of the school year, here is a tiny, minuscule, peek into this particular elementary teacher's world:
I usually don't have time to reflect on the year until the week before the end of the school year and that's when I started this blog - a week ago.
My reminiscing begins with the first time I met the students.
A class of 21 students was being divided and on the afternoon I met my eleven students, they practically raced into the room, carrying their desks and things, flanked by their current teacher. They were wild-eyed, rowdy, and ready to play. Laughter and giggles filled the room. They noisily put their desks down, not really taking notice of me, but looking around the room. My initial response was to tell them to be quiet and sit down, but they were still with their former teacher, and I didn't want to override her authority. She spoke to them sharply, but they still didn't seem to calm down, and then they were gone. I felt like a few tornadoes had visited the room.
In that first week the students were with me, I was stern, and didn't accept any kind of silliness from them. Poor things. They had looks of horror on their faces as they realized "nutty" classroom time was done.
The hard work began.
Two of my students, a boy, MK and a girl, PS, hated Math.
One of the students, a girl, GD, shut down when she was frustrated by anything, in addition to being a huge grouch in the mornings.
Three of my boys, AS, MC, and HA, were highly immature and lazy.
Fortunately I had four girls, DP, RC, SB, DJ, and one boy, AE, who were bright, and only needed minimum guidance. They learned well by themselves, and this enabled me to work one-on-one with the harder to reach children.
Before Christmas break (yes, I said Christmas), one of my students, PS, moved to another school. Darn it too, she was just starting to work for me.
Except for the five that were independent learners, I kept the others in after school tutoring Mon, Tues, and Tr.; I was skeptical about how much the tutoring was helping...
Right around Spring Break, my boys began to have problems at recess: fighting. As a punishment, one received out of school suspension; the others had no recess for a week. Ugh. One of the boys, EA, was then transferred to another class.
I was down to nine students.
I started having lunch with my students: boys on one day, girls on another. We began to bond on a personal level. I found out about their home lives. Well, the girls talked about their home lives, the boys were obsessed with pirahnas, lol. Although, one boy, HA, would occassionaly ask me a question about me; he wanted to know what I did on the weekends, etc.
This small act, having lunch with the students, took care of the fighting at recess, in addition to making us all closer.
Okay, so they took the state exams.
Out of the nine, 7 passed the Reading exam. Two were commended. (100%)
Out of the nine, 8 passed the Math exam. Again, two were commended.
All in all, it was a mixed year, but a good one.
GD, the little girl who didn't like Math, who hardly ever turned in her homework, or kept up with any papers, gave me the following note on the next to the last day of school:
At the top was written, "G's information about summer."
"Ms. Bush, I will miss you very much. I was going to tell you what an adventure I'm going to have on summer. I am going to Mexico with my cousins, and my tia, then to my cousin's house. I will really miss you. I can't stay away from you, but I will still remember you, in my hart. it's like your an angle. I will really miss you. may god bless you.
Sincerely, G"
This made the year fantastic. (GD drew the following 'angle' on her note to me):