The End

It's the end of another school year, at least. It's an important ceremony for the students to stack the desks on top of each other and pile up the chairs. Then, of course, they always want to know if they can lie on the floor! Sure...go ahead...it's filthy, but go ahead!

I started a new tradition when I first came to Las Vegas. My original school had 100% "free or reduced-price lunch" students. Many of them ate most of their meals at school, and several students were given backpacks filled with food, (like individual servings of pork and beans or granola bars) to go home for the weekend through a program sponsored by a charity.  So, when the last day of school approached, I realized that, because we dismissed before lunch, a few of my students might not get any lunch at home that day. I know, I know...feeding  your kid seems to be a basic function of parenthood. But, seriously, some of our parents weren't into basic functions sometimes. Sigh.

Anyway...we'd also read a story earlier in the year about a runaway pancake, and I discovered that some of my students had never eaten pancakes. Now, before you roll your eyes too far, realize that it was simply a cultural thing: if your Mami made you a delicious Mexican breakfast each morning, you weren't missing pancakes. So, I decided to get two birds with one meal by feeding my class pancakes on the last day of school. Plus, it would fill the hours between 9:00 and noon in a fun way. 

We had the pancake breakfast. I brought in my griddle and cooked pancakes till even my hungriest gordo was filled to the brim. It was a huge success! We had fun, I knew no one was going home to an empty house with an empty stomach, and everyone loved Mrs. [EarthSignMama] for feeding them! I've been making pancakes on the last day of school ever since.

In my new school, it was a bit more complicated. I taught the entire fourth grade----usually 100 + students. But, we cycled them in and out of my room, and the aide helped with pouring the milk and I used two griddles, and it still worked. The other teachers played games with them in their rooms. Last year and this year, a new partner volunteered to feed two of the classes, and I'd feed two, so that is even more awesome and we had an even more fabulous fun time. Seriously, we can never stop this tradition. I have kids who ask on the first day in the fall if we're going to have pancakes on the last day...their older brother or sister was also in our school and everyone knows about the pancakes.

So, we had our pancakes, we played Heads-up Seven-up, we stacked our desks, we passed out report cards, we all hugged and said good-bye. Then, the kids went home and the teachers ate a lovely lunch our principal had ordered in from a local Mexican restaurant (which makes the best enchiladas in the world). Then, we went to our classrooms and ---no! We didn't clean up and go home that afternoon! We'd decided a couple of weeks prior that, instead, we'd have a planning time.

It sounded like such a good idea at the time. We usually hold a "retreat" with this school. When we had more money, we'd rent the clubhouse of a local golf-course and meet there on a Saturday near the end of school. We were fed breakfast and lunch, and we'd spend the time going over what worked and what didn't work from the previous year. Then we'd plan the next year and develop a theme for for teacher training. Really, it was very beneficial and is a big reason I love this school. We're truly on the same page here. I've worked in schools where there were little cliques, or where the administration was in an adversarial position in relation to the staff. But our school---we're in this together. The upper grades collaborate regularly with the lower grades so that we're not working against each other. We help each other across grade levels. We identify kids early so that we can keep track of their progress all the way through. We keep data so we know what works and what isn't so effective. I love working here.

But, this year...we're broke. We had a little staff training money left over, so we agreed that we'd spend the afternoon on the last day of students doing our collaborative planning in our grade levels. When we were officially off the clock at 3:45, we'd be paid from our last bit of staff development funding from 3:45 to 7:45 P.M. Then, we could go home, come back on our last official workday on Friday to clean and pack up our rooms prior to check-out for the year.  About 5:00 P.M. fourth grade hit the wall. So we went over to Sonic and got some tall slushy fruit drinks and came back to keep on trucking.

But! It was great!! We started using the new Common Core State Standards this year, and they were confusing to most of us. So this gave us a chance to look them over, and figure out how we were going to teach them and how to help each other. Since we're departmentalized, it is trickier. We don't have a science and social teacher, so we have to integrate it into our other subjects. I use information they read in their Nevada state books in reading class for writing prompts and I make up language and grammar lessons using that text, too. Then, the students are using the same information several times and it helps to develop vocabulary and teach them about their state and country. We're so good. We planned some Science Fridays, too. They'll read and write about it during the week, we'll do the labs on Friday, and then reflect and read and write some more another day. I'm actually really pumped for next year! I don't have to think about school at all this summer now, because we spent the time and we're organized. Whew.

I'll close with my favorite shirt from the last day of school. I laughed so hard when I saw one of the fifth graders wearing this. I insisted that he stop by my room first, so I could take this photo. It's a perfect sentiment for the Last Day of School: