1- Last Day!

Last day of school went off without a hitch. Well, there was one unfortunate one, but I'll save that for later. 

We finished Acts, thus reading/skimming the whole bible in a year. The decorations were taken down (with hardly any fussing), desks cleaned out, coatroom packed up, homework handed in. We still had read aloud time; they asked me to read Wilder Boys even though we knew we wouldn't get far. When it was time to stop, they all groaned and asked for another chapter. Not today. Then they grumbled that we should've read this book earlier in the year because it was so good... we set it aside to maybe finish it next year. I need to make sure I build in read-aloud time with the 7-8th graders. Start that habit right away.

All the work got done in time to do our class prize! We watched the movie Inside Out. That worked perfectly because I corrected papers while watching and got 90% corrected by the movie's end. After school it didn't take much doing to enter the grades and print the reports off. I finished filling out the report cards right as the carnival started. Perfect. Except I realized two of the kids never returned their report cards. One of the parents was fine getting only the paper copy. The other parent still hasn't responded. 

Two sad things: the NaNo books arrived Sunday, too late to hand them out to my kids. I think I'll wait to give them out until the Open House in August. Then I can see their faces when they get them. If any kids want them super bad, they'll reach out to me and we can figure out a time to meet up sometime this summer. 

The other sad thing was that I caught a kid cheating the last day of school. The last poetry assignment was to write a limerick. He took it home to work on it and returned a wonderful poem. Except it was too wonderful. I googled the words and found the exact website he used to find his poem. So I asked him if he wrote it himself, and he lied and said he came up with it on his own. Really? Welllll, maybe his mom and grandma helped. So I showed him the website with the poem word for word. Then it turned into my mom said it was okay for me to use it. Hmmm, doubtful, I know your mom and she would not be in favor of that. Just in case that was true, I had him rewrite it. Meanwhile, he had a mild panic attack. Once I talked him through that, THEN we could start writing. Except it was time for closing chapel. He shoved the paper in his pocket and I didn't think anything of it until after chapel when we were back at school. He handed me the paper with a finished poem on it. Hmm... written during closing chapel. Great. 

The day ended with an ice cream truck and free ice cream for students. They had a good time picking out a treat, and the weather was perfect for eating outside. The PTL 7-8th grade parents had a carnival planned for 6pm that night, so I stayed at school doing my report cards until then. All the kids who came to the carnival picked up their report cards! I just have two that need to be sent home.

The carnival was better than I thought. It was good to catch up with parents and other teachers (we haven't seen much of anyone during this school year). One of the games was a 'cake walk', except instead of cake, we got popsicles. The mom played music, we danced around the circle and stopped on a number when the music stopped. Not many people played (Mrs. L and I, plus a parent), so the mom gave all of us a popsicle even though we weren't on the winning randomly-generated number. I had a chance to talk to the mom of the cheating student. She and her husband (and I) were disappointed to end the year on that note. :( Since then, their son wrote a new limerick and sent me an apology note. Not that this is an excuse, but he was feeling overwhelmed with everything he had to do on the last day of school, especially since he was going to a friend's house between school and the carnival and didn't want to stay after. I had told everyone they couldn't leave school until all their work was handed in.

Today (Monday) was our final staff meeting of the year. The shortest one so far! Only 35 minutes. I have a bunch of things on my to-do list and a few days in Courtland to finish them before I head off for Fulda and my summer jobs. 

My plans for the summer: work at the Fulda library and the Plaid Moose Coffee Shop, work on my Habitat house (which still hasn't started yet... hopefully I'll hear something this week), travel with friends (camp, go to the Grand Canyon/SW US national parks, visit the North Shore), judge a bunch of county fairs, and of course enjoy time with family. See you in the fall!