Summer Mode

Okay, we are in summer mode.  I start an endless barrage of meetings next week to help the district transition into the era of a new superintendent.  Her goal is to improve instruction and merge the ACT concepts with the state indicators (aka: our benchmarks).  After that I get to participate in a workshop where we create ideas for teaching 21st century skills in the classroom with the ACT requirements.  This coincides with the start of a Summer Enrichment Workshop with my own kids in my own classroom.  This simply means no endless days of summer school remediating students with which I have no relationship and no background knowledge of their actual skill (other than their grades from 2009-2010).  I hate to admit it, given my true love of teaching, but summer school is excruciating.  I made a promise to myself, and sort of to my kids, that I wouldn't teach summer school in this district.  My work load during the year is so challenging to my family time, that the summer is supposed to be theirs.  I am getting better at saving my off-time for them, but we need the money.  Reality is almost always less fun than our fantasies.  However, with my oldest daughter's new home and daycare, my kids have a safe and less expensive home for the 1/2 days I will be doing the enrichment.  I will also be less drained (I hope) with this option of hangin' with my own students and creating theater productions.  I hope it is as fun as it sounds.  I could use some low-key fun.  I am not typically good at keeping things on my end low stress.  My mind set is the more work I do outside the class, the easier life is inside the class.  Not a concept that is popular in my home.

On a side note, all of my closest collegues have been transferred out of my building as part of the restructuring our urban middle school is enduring.  We made AYP but had to go through restructuring anyway as part of the Raise for the Top grant from Obama.  Since we are in the lowest 5%, I guess AYP is too little too late.  My kids...actually, all 7th graders, did rock the test and out scored our goal by another 18%.  We are shooting for 75% next year, even without the students who are leaving to head for the arts and science academy.   Letters and postcards are going out claiming our school will truly be a college prep school.  I am hoping that is not more rhetoric.  I am praying that the resources in our part of the city will truly be equal and a difference can truly be made for the kids in our neighborhood.  

Well, off to shop with my girls and plan all the summer home projects.  Later.

Transition

My little school, with its status as consistently low performing, is going through some difficult changes.  The majority of the teaching staff,  with the exception of eleven teachers,  has been transferred to other buildings in our district.  Some are headed for middle school positions and some are transitioning to high school.  For the summer our school is going into her cocoon and hoping to be reborn in the fall as a beautiful butterfly.  I will acknowledge that sometimes purging is necessary so there is room for growth, but it is not an easy process for anyone.  As we have learned, person by person, who is going and who is staying, gossip and speculation have become part of the daily schedule.  However, overall,  the unspoken reality is worry and fear of the unknown.  Earlier in the year, when I expressed some of the frustration described in this blog, I thought I would be the one moving on.  I wanted a change and even a new challenge, and frankly, a break from many frustrations of trying to do the work a several people while raising my kids.  Ultimately, I decided my students deserved my loyalty and commitment to see them through their last year at this school.  Selfishly,  I came to the obvious realization, that my closest friends are here and the risk of starting over without, them seemed to daunting.  Ironically, they will be leaving me instead.  As we come to the last three days of school for the year, my heart is honestly a little heavy.  I see real potential for great changes at our middle school, but I will miss my friends so much.  I am not a person who constructs deep friendships easily.  It is hard to find people I feel safe to both laugh and cry with.  All the people with which I have developed some of that safety will be moving on.  I am trying to keep my heart and mind wide open, because the most jarring reality is....this is not about me.   This is about the students.  Most of me knows that this change could be immeasurably good for them and the students of the future.  I am going to try to have the faith I talk so much about. Sometimes that is the only choice you have. 

On the home front, my kids are trying to transition into summer. I am trying to find a way to work and make extra money to keep us afloat, while not eating up all of their summer days.  I will be writing curriculum in two different groups and teaching a summer enrichment class in reader's theater.  More than anything, my marriage needs my attention...now.