The Week of No Teaching

That's right. This week I am doing absolutely no teaching. We visited the Intrepid Museum on Monday, via subway. This was an insanely large amount of walking between the closed subway station on our end and the 5 avenue and 4 block walk on the midtown end. We were very tired. Adrian and T-Rex were surprisingly among the best behaved. I think they consider going on trips to be an actual [albeit rare] privilege and therefore take the repsonsibility quite seriously, while others brought headphones and so much candy that I could practically see their teeth falling out of their heads as they stared open-mouthed at the navy fighter jets on the top deck of the ship.

We also went rock climbing on the Hangar Deck. Brianna and her long as hell legs managed to outclimb all the boys and girls. T-Rex was too afraid to go higher than 10 feet. Adrian could barely mount the first pegs on the wall. Brianna was given a "challenge climb" on the adult side and managed to scale even that on her third try. Chanya screamed like she was being murdered at five feet as soon as she looked down and then when she returned to the ground immediately insisted on going a second time. They loved it.

The planes were kinda boring [or maybe I just don't like military-type-stuff] but the control room of the ship was interesting [and smelly] and the McDonalds was a little hectic [we had to stop one kid from ordering a 20 piece chicken nugget meal. Poor buddy is probably bordering on 300 pounds already. My feet are still recovering.

Today was a half day which culminated in a pile 0f 16 promotional portfolios that need extensively detailed cover sheets. And report cards. And updating 50 cumulative records. Yawn Yawn. Is this really the kind of stuff people in offices do all day long every day? Yuck.

Tomorrow is the Female Empowerment Conference.

Thursday is a full day of PD at the Bronx Botanical Gardens.

And Friday I'm outta her for my college reunion.

Ahhh, the Week of No Teaching

After work I met with my PhD adviser and chose classes and began to get myself all worked up for grad school but the highlight of the day, by far, was watching Mad Hot Ballroom. I think watching an inspiring movie about public school kids [and I'm not talking "Dangerous Minds" or some silly thing like that which of course has its place... I do love Drumline... but a real-life story about the little ones in NYC public schools] is just what one needs in June when they are about to pull their hair out. Now, I am honestly starting to panic about the limited amount of days that I have left with my students.

I have put up my very last bulletin board [selections from our Poetry Blog], and prepared my students for their very last test [vocabulary, kinda boring] and our Poetry Performances were sweet [if you are lucky I might even send you the video file of them performing...], and some [not most] have really become little ladies and gentlemen, ready for the 7th grade. I think that when it is all over I will probably be able to look at the experience more fondly than I do in the right-now. I will say things like "those were the most important years of my life" or "those kids were really something special" or something else of equal corny-ness. And it will be partially true, I think I will miss the connections you make with the kids you really know, the ones that seek you out specifically when they have a problem and laugh at your jokes and freak out when you change your hair color every 6 weeks [ok maybe that's just me]. I started planning my End-of-Year jeopardy game which features categories like "Name that Student" with riddles about each kid, and "How Well do you Know Ms. _____?" with questions about me, as well as more academic related categories. And it made me think about how many dynamic, charismatic, and unique personalities I have in my homeroom especially. And also wonder about Melanie in Jamaica and wonder how she's doing. And what poor souls will have to deal with T-Rex and Adrian next year.

And of course, I can go visit. I will see some of my kiddies in the Summer Program they were accepted to. I also want to go visit some of my third graders who were accepted to KIPP schools starting this year. I can come back in the fall and help them out in the year two launch or [more realistically], just go by to say hello. But visiting is not the same. I know that I can't do this job for another year, at least not right now, but I bet I'm going to feel very guilty and nostalgic about it for a while.

Despite the "closure" tone of this post, it's not the last one of the year... Too many trips and events are upcoming and bound to provide some interesting writing material. I think it was just that damn movie and it's feel-good-ness.