May 24, 2012
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The Daily News
1 This is not the last day of school.
2 This is a sham.
3 I went back through my old DN's and it used to be around June 15.
4 No wonder I feel so little emotion.
5 I went to Raging Waters with the seniors yesterday, but felt somewhat removed. I felt I still had tons of work left to do.
6 I realized quickly that it doesn't really matter when you start school. It was pretty early this year.
7 You still feel somewhat ridiculous when you near June 15.
8 We are nowhere near June 15.
9 Honestly. You could go back and look all the way to 2003-4.
10 But today is the last day of school. I go in and teach one class in the morning, and then I have the rest of the day to finish my grading and to post grades.
11 I oddly don't have that sensation of surrealism that usually accompanies the last day of school because it is MAY!
12 I'm not complaining, just pointing out what cutbacks have done. If I do the math correctly, we are three weeks earlier than the traditional last day of school.
13 Never mind that we started ridiculously early. At this point in the year, i don't remember having started early.
14 I'm just realizing that traditional graduation was in mid-June, that the weather used to be idiotically hot, and that there was always a feeling of other-worldliness.
15 I also realized that much of my stuff was rushed this year; that I had to be less "rigorous" due to quick deadlines.
16 A group of teachers, administrators, former department chairs and even union guys had a talk about the amount of money we waste each year on testing, particularly on the STAR.
17 We agreed not to let a polite, non-confrontational discussion go public. It was just water-cooler talk, but the issue of how much money goes to testing is seldomly discussed.
18 The amount of interruption on our classes due to testing also was a Raging Waters discussion.
19 Nothing official, mind you. It was just interesting that a microcosm of the various factions in a school had a mini-discussion on that issue.
20 If that's what's going out into the grapevine, then it's an issue I always thought about but never really brought up publicly. For some reason, that question is usually avoided.
21 But here it is May 24, and I feel I didn't accomplish as much as I have in past years. The students were short-changed.
22 The shortening of the school year has a lot to do with it, but the testing during spring in particular was absurd. It seemed that we spend billions of hours training (we cut into students' learning time in order to get training), setting our rooms up for testing, sharpening pencils, getting test booklets out to the kids, accounting for who didn't take a test, and on and on.
23 Hmmmm.
24 And the deal with the STAR is that the students have utterly no buy-in. They always ask me if it will affect their grades, and I always lie and say, "Of COURSE it affects your grade!" with tongue planted firmly in cheek.
25 I just ask politely that they do the best they can so that we could walk proudly as a school.
26 So yeah.
27 Today is officially the last day of school.
28 I am officially done at 10:15 in the morning. I still have grades to get in, and my deadline is 4 p.m. although we technically have until tomorrow at 4 p.m. to post them. I'm probably going to go home and get that done. The school day will end, and I probably won't even be on campus.
29 La-di-dah.
30 So I'll probably throw one more DN out there for the school year.
31 It just doesn't feel like the last day. If just doesn't. I'm guessing if I ran the school bank it would feel like it, but as a teacher, I just feel that I have about two more weeks of teaching that needs to be done.
32 Ain't gonna happen.
33 Last night I was awakened by a moaning wind. While grading some of my seniors' poetry, I began to feel their angst. When I awakened this morning I thought of the looks on their faces when they sat and delivered their poems and farewells.
34 It still doesn't feel like the last day. But as I read my third period's poems, I just thought of how lucky I am to have had so many of them for a second go-round. All of them were great kids, and it was an honor to have had seniors this year.
35 A lot of soul and salutes to friends and families. Waking up after the moaning wind brought me a little more reality.
36 So I think I'll sign off, at least for today. I need to get all my ducks in a row by 4.
37 Have a great day.
38 All the best.
39 Peace.
~H~
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