TeacherScribe

A sure sign it's the last week of school: Nearly every teacher is showing a movie.  (I'm no exception.  In College Comp we watched Training Day and compared it to "Young Goodman Brown."  In Lit & Language 11 we began The Village today.  I usually use this in conjunction with The Crucible and Fahrenheit 451, but I couldn't fit it in until now. The trips to the Dairy Queen are under way.  We will venture there last block on Friday. Nearly everyone is packing it in.  This goes for both students and teachers alike.  I'm using having no first block - all seniors who are now long gone - to get my work done and all my grading finished.  There are a few brave souls giving finals and working right to the last day.  I admire those people.  I thought about pushing the due date for the research paper back, but there was no way I was going to subject myself to grading 25 research papers over the weekend.  If that means packing it in for the final four days (when in all honesty it's ludicrous that the rest of the school is even here), well so be it.  I'm a bad teacher. The call for extra credit.  "I'm at a 46 percents, is there anything extra I can do to get my grade up to passing."  Enough said. Locker clean out.  The trash bags runner over with tablets and other junk that has piled up in lockers over the year. Room preparation.  The one I always hate.  It seems ridiculous to pack everything in my room away for a mere 9 weeks or so.  That's a lot of packing to do.  Especially when I teach summer school, and I'll need to dig some of it out anyway.  But oh well.  Eight weeks from now they'll get around to cleaning my room and I'll be thankful I packed everything away. Supply purchases are due.  This is almost laughable since we had our budgets cut by half a few years ago.  I believe we were told, "This won't be permanent."  Well, we are still working with half of what we used to have.  It seems foolish to submit a purchase order for such little things as pens and pencils and tag board.  I'll just save my receipts from Sam's Club or Office Max this summer. The big end of school celebration.  Well, we used to have one of these where the teachers all got together to offer various activities for the kids.  I used to show Lord of the Rings in the band room with Mr. Felt.  Other teachers observed kids skateboarding out in the parking lot.  There was a Texas Hold 'em tournament in one room.  Video games in another.  Dancing in the gym.   Then everyone got together for drawings and prizes in the old gym.  But few bothered to turn out for this, so the whole thing was junked.  Too bad. Regardless, I'm looking for school to be done.  I get to spend my days with Kenzie.  Let me tell you, when I can't begin to tell you how wonderful it is and how blessed I am to walk it her room and see that little girl lying there peering up at me.  When she sees me, she giggles and begins thrashing around.  This morning she was on all fours with her little but up in the air talking to herself.  When I walked in, she broke out in a huge smile and flipped over and began jabbering away. Now that's how I could spend every morning for the rest of my life.