Homestretch

Yesterday was a busy, busy day at the school - our annual Día de los niños celebration. Starting with an assembly that included some teachers doing a few zumba songs was a change from previous years of more traditional entertainment such as regional dances from Mexico or mariachi music. It was one of those moments as a teacher when I was stepping out of my comfort zone, knowing that in two weeks my students would be doing their own dance performance for an even bigger audience with varying levels of comfort. It is always good to put myself in a situation where I can empathize even more with my students. When I would glimpse the 8th grade boys in the corner with their serious faces showing that they were oh so impressed with us, I had to hold myself back from laughing.

From the assembly we had a flurry of centers with a lunch break inbetween. And to the boys' defense, most of them talked to us about the zumba songs with smiles afterwards. A group of 8th grade girls were spreading their joy as they donned the black frames of 3-D glasses that they had popped the lens out of with coordinating "kids" hairstyles.

At the end of the day, as I was walking one of my 8th grade boys to his truck in the pick up line it hit me - Monday the 8th graders will start their last Spanish week with me, followed by an English week, and then we will be off to a four day trip to tour three colleges on the other side of our state and the coast.

One side of me is thrilled for my students, excited about their next steps, while another side is getting more and more nostalgic for the students that I have had since they were sixth graders, and the only class that I will probably ever teach as a self contained class. Such a blend of emotions.

I have an outline of the last two weeks and what they will entail, and all along, I need to keep telling myself to slow down, to make time for closure and to make sure my students know just how proud I am of them, as well as my excitement for their futures.

Check-In

This year I have been blogging considerably less on this particular blog. I was thinking over the weekend, that I have been writing as much as ever, but a lot of my reflective writing has been in various writer's notebooks instead of in my blogs. With my doctoral classes and other possibilities it has been a year to pause and reflect, trying to decide what is most important with my career and with balancing being a teacher, mom, and doctoral student.

I will try to get back into blogging on a more regular basis, especially with posting about professional development books (I have so many great ones in my TBR stacks). In the meantime, here are a few quick, random notes:

As a student...

• I have been absolutely loving my doctoral classes. It is always fun to get back into a classroom as a learner. 
• Statistics was the class that I was most dreading because I was afraid that I would be way out of my comfort zone, worried about sinking. Then an amazing thing happened. I had my first class and my professor put me at ease. His teaching style was perfect for that particular class with students who do not necessarily have strong statistically inclined backgrounds. Rather than being stressed out all semester, I have been enjoying the class, and it is pretty satisfying to realize how much I have been learning. Of course, we are just scratching the surface with the course, but I am feeling increasingly more confident. The experience has had me thinking on how important the climate the teacher sets up is. This is not something new, but it really hit me with this course since I have had a very positive experience in a content area which could have very easily been the opposite extreme given another professor. 
• I am realizing that my courses are helping me to zoom back out to the big picture. For the past three school years, I have been digging deeper and deeper into my specific school, students, and position. It has been beneficial to step back with my courses to consider education in general throughout the United States. 
• Reading through various articles and considering topics for my dissertation, I have realized that there are so many options. It has led me to carefully examine what is most important to me within my passion for literacy, especially in a workshop setting.

As a teacher...

• I am constantly reminding myself to step back and reevaluate. This is the hectic time of year where it seems like there is always someone doing one form of testing or another combined with other spring events. Rather than having all students present for instruction, I am often adapting for time missed for state assessments or for shorter weeks because of other interruptions to the typical schedule. 
• As I have shifted over the three years from all content areas with one class to teaching social studies/language arts to two classes, and eventually to teaching language arts to three classes, I realized that the teaching time often seems too short. As a result I do not feel like I have the best balance. I am trying to make the most of the weeks we have left in the school year (currently only 5 more weeks before I leave with the 8th grade class on a college/coast trip for their last week of school while the 6th and 7th graders finish up the year with a substitute teacher). With these five weeks, I am going to pay special attention to: spending more time conferring in both reading and writing and allowing time for students to share their writing. I want to slow down to celebrate spending time together as a classroom community of learners and to celebrate successes. Making a commitment to write with my students as a mentor of process (as Penny Kittle suggests in Write Beside Them) is also at the forefront of my mind right now. I need to consider all that I wanted to finish this school year and what is realistic while still spending time to focus on students, rather than getting caught up in the constant whirl of activity.
• Right now I am dedicating a large portion of time with the 8th graders to reflect on their experiences in our school. We are reading, discussion, reflecting, and doing a writing as a gift project that has been going really well. With 6th and 7th grade we have been reading widely about different people who have stood up for their beliefs (mostly through non-violent means). Next week we are going to shift into writing expository essays around our unit's theme. 
• I am constantly trying to plan and slow down so that I can savor these last five weeks, giving my best effort until the end of the school year that is quickly approaching, intentionally planning out each week reflecting my priorities as an educator.