The arrival of June has meant the beginning of hot weather and the countdown to the end of the school year. I looked at the calendar today and was flabbergasted when I came to the realization that there are literally 3 weeks left of school. My grade 8’s have their graduation ceremony on the Tuesday of the last week of school. That date is 18 days from today and only 11 school days. Teachers have a report card writing day today. This is where my brain started to go a little sideways. Report cards are going to be due to the office very soon. There is still so much to do and such little time.
It’s amazing how fast the school year disappears. I am constantly preaching to my students about how quickly time is going to go and how they need to make sure they are always aware of deadlines and manage their time. As I look at the calendar, I wonder if I have practiced what I preach. With only three weeks left if feels like there is so much stuff still to complete. It is the same way every year though. The curriculum can at times be daunting, to say the least, and there always seems to be that crunch at the end to make sure you have gotten through everything you wanted and or are required.
The last month of school can be the most difficult time to keep students engaged and focused. The weather has changed and they can see summer right around the corner. In many ways, some students are already settling into cruise control and are basically just trying to get through the remaining time. This provides a big challenge to teachers as behaviours can creep in and make classroom management even more difficult than usual. Teachers must be diligent about maintaining routines and keeping the students actively engaged and busy during this time. It can be easy to fall into the trap of taking your foot off the pedal and providing more free time in your class but this needs to be managed very carefully. When students start to see that there is no longer a great deal of emphasis being put on the “learning” in the class then there is the potential for them to check out and that is when you see more problems with students acting inappropriately.
At this point I have most of the curriculum expectations covered but there are still a few things that we are trying to finish up before the year ends. I try to make the last month of school a little more fun by saving some engaging projects and activities to end with. Currently, we are working on completing our study of the Outsiders novel, an all-time favourite and classic I will post about at another time, we are finishing up our Slam Poems and we have our end of year media project. The media project is something I always do with my grade 8’s. They get to work in groups to create a Trailer for what would be the movie of their year. They have so much fun putting these together. It is great to see all of the things they have enjoyed about the year and also their anticipations about entering high school next year.
The final thing that I will be doing with my grade 8’s is an activity that I started last year. I have started getting my grade 8 students to write a letter to themselves. The idea of the letter is to write about who they are as people right now. Talk about their interests and friendships. Comment on the activities that they are involved in and how they feel about school. Basically, anything they want to say about themselves. They will also include their goals and dreams for when they are finishing high school. Once the letter is complete, they seal it in an envelope and address it to themselves. I hold onto the letters and will mail the letters to them in 4 years when they are just about to graduate high school. I have a couple sets of these letters now and am looking forward to sending out the first set in two years.
Today is a PD day for our school board. The purpose of the PD day is for teachers to have time to start working on their report cards. This is something that our union fought for a few years ago. Report cards can take a significant amount of time and typically that time that teachers need to spend working outside of school hours. Working outside of school hours is very common for teachers but that is a topic for another time. Teachers are scrambling today to get work marked and notes prepared so that they can get a good head start on the inputting of marks and comments. It is at this moment that stress sets in and many realize just how little time is left. There are still units to teach and things to get done. Us grade 8 teachers are scrambling today to get graduation planning finished. Award winners need to be chosen, grad sweaters ordered and so much other planning. Report card day quickly turns into a get everything else done day.
Many of us are already jumping into planning mode for next year. We all received our assignments a few weeks ago and just this week we got our timetables and schedules for next year. I also learned that I will have to move classrooms and so that has added a whole new level of stress as I will need to start packing things in my room up over the next few weeks. If there is one thing I really dislike in life, it’s moving. Nothing screams frustration more than packing up boxes of stuff to move to a new location and then unpack. The reality is though, I will need a bigger room next year because I will have a large class and a very high needs group next year.
So as the next three weeks melt away like the ice cream on the hot summer days we are all about to enjoy, I will look back on the fond memories of my group this year. Many of them have come such a long way and I am so proud of the gains they have made both as students and as young people. As stressful as the last month of school can be, I can’t help but enjoy watching these guys prepare to take that big leap and transition out of middle school. Many of them have been here since Kindergarten and so this will be a big deal for them. Before I know it, I will be standing on stage and handing out certificates and all the stress that is on my shoulders right now will be in the rearview mirror. Now back to writing report cards.