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.