Heck. Yes. Even though I was done at noon yesterday, I decided to stick around for another day and a half to clean out my closet. I just felt like after this year I needed a day of purging and a fresh start next year. I've taught eleven years now, and this one was, by far, the most challenging nine months of my career. I've always prided myself on having excellent classroom management skills, but this is one class I'm ashamed to admit I never really had control of. Here are the highlights (or lowlights, if you will):
- 24 students, known by all elementary staff since kindergarten as "that class" - the one that made me consider having another baby just for the maternity leave...
- 6 new students - twin boys shortly before MAP testing and one more student for good measure the second to last week of school
- the perfect storm of intelligence, pre-maturity (as in knowing too much for their age), immaturity, willingness to share/need to be heard (as in not being able to say the word "pizza" without having the class launch into 30 simultaneous diatribes about favorite flavors, least favorite flavors, how much they can eat in a sitting, and how much their uncle ate one time), creativity, highly developed senses of humor (as in no less than 10 class clowns in the bunch), too many chiefs/not enough Indians, too many boys, too many hormones, too many kids/not enough space - As one mother said recently, "The chances of all THOSE kids being the same age, in the same town, and winding up in the same class together is just...unreal."
- 2 life-threatening conditions to fret about (one newly diagnosed and both requiring detailed carb counting for all class parties and treats) and about 26 cases of ADHD (the other 2 have LZ)
- 1 first-grade son who's a teensy bit on the whiny side and had a rough year, too
- 1 two-year-old son who lived up to the classic saying about his age--with a vengeance
But it's over. I survived. And I even told my 30 little ruffians I loved them on the last day. Because really, they're neat kids. They just need to be dispersed among 30 classes to dilute the neatness.
And after a day and a half of purging and organizing, my closet is flippin' spotless and I have all kinds of great ideas for next year.
But first, time to purge and organize my house. Holy pigsty!
|This is my Grammy with one of her kindergarten classes. There are 30 of them. No aide. I always knew Grammy was awesome, but wow. Rockstar.|