School at the End

End-of-year education falls to pieces, many times. Teachers are encouraged to maintain scholarly expectations and strict discipline right until the very last, even though the state tests are over and results are back, but the final weeks of school always find students ready to meander the hallways and laze on into summer vacation a few weeks early.

Not so under my jurisdiction.

My students were ready to be lazy, after our tests, but then I introduced the final project for the year: read a book, complete a fiction analysis worksheet, take a quiz, and design and create a magnificent book report project. When we’re not being interrupted to go see the drama class’s spring semester, 15-minute (including long musical interludes) production, or to dunk teachers (I even fell off the seat once without the target being triggered, I was so tensely anticipating the inevitable splash), or to watch the faculty basketball game (my team won, 51-50; I think maybe that one point that propelled us to victory was the foul shot I made) complete with faculty cheerleaders (little leg kicks and waving arms but no human pyramids and back hand springs), or to watch teachers award their pet students certificates of grandeur, my 58 charges’ noses are to the grindstone, churning out what I hope will be original, creative, and fun work.

I have to look at it to grade it, after all.

That grading is the biggest thing on my own agenda for the end-of-year season. I need to rearrange all of my books and equipment and stuff so that my grimy floor can be waxed over summer break, but I think I can get some students to do a lot of that packing for me. I never know what to do with the students who actually finish their projects early, besides give them grunt work.

I’ve taken to coming to school much later than I normally do. I arrive less than half an hour early on most days, even when I ride bike and have to allocate prep time for washing up. Don’t think that means I’m sleeping in, though–M and I have completed a whole lot of garden work during that 5:30-6:45am hour while N is still busy dreaming: mulching, picking strawberries and potato bugs, weeding.

I leave as soon is professionally feasible in the afternoons, too, and fritter away planning time by reading the news and, ahem, writing.

Basically, my professional work ethic has ventured into the sewer.

Life does that, sometimes, I guess. Circumstances trigger lapses in mental capacity or emotional stability. As one student said a few weeks ago, “I wish my mom would just kill me. My life would be so much easier!”

Come, come, summer vacation!