Well, I did it. I made it to the last day of the school year. At 12:15pm today I will say goodbye to my last class of students, then go to the 8th grade brunch to say goodbye to the students who are moving on to high school.
As is the case every year, I have some complicated feelings about all of it.
This afternoon is our staff party. Tomorrow we have to come in to clean up our classrooms. My friend has been driving me too and from work all week, so my husband can use the car to take the kids to camp, but tomorrow I’ll take them myself, then show up at work briefly to check out, then go for a run. It’s been so weird not to have the car all week, I stayed focused all week, cleaning up my classroom so that Friday I won’t have to stay long. I’m looking forward to running some errands tomorrow.
And once I put this school year behind me, I have two weeks until we leave for St. Louis. The summer fun photo book is already done, so I’ll be spending that time cleaning up the house a bit. I still haven’t packed away our winter clothes because we’ve still been wearing some of them, so I plan to do that. And to purge some stuff that has been accumulating. The house is feeling cramped, which means it’s time to go through and get rid of things.
I also have appointments on most days. Missing school is such a PITA that I generally schedule most appointments for when I’m off, which means that every summer starts with a slew of visits to the dentist, eye doctor, vet, and car service center.
I’m almost done with my Procedures slide deck at school. I also did an inventory on my free reading library, so I’ll have that ready in the fall. Both of those projects are time consuming and I’m glad I got them done this spring. I’m really hoping to start the fall strong. And to not think about work much between now and mid-August.
Our summer is pretty packed. We’re traveling almost all of July. I know that it will be August before I know it. I really want to savor my time away from work. Being a teacher can be pretty all consuming, and if I don’t take them time to decompress when I have it, it can be hard to maintain my stamina. And then I end up having stress dreams like I did this morning, which is why I’m up early writing this post (despite going to bed much too late last night).
And my alarm is about to go off so I’ll press post on this. Last day of school, let’s do this.
Congratulations!! Mine is tomorrow! Been a good year but I agree that, as a teacher, we “bring” stuff home and I don’t mean homework. Our HS graduation is tomorrow, super proud of the students. They grew so much this year; not without struggles though.
Congratulations on another school year wrapped. ALSO: Impressed and proud of you for all the advance wrap up of class room that you have achieved. You really do need the space that will give you on Friday.