Vacation Starts, Let's Get To Work

My first day of vacation was greeted by the highest close of oil futures in history, just shy of $140 per barrel. The stock market dropped and unemployment increased by.5%, the largest one month increase in some time. I went and filled up the truck with gas and it cost $70.00. On top of that I still had to go to my classroom to bring some things back home so I could work on them over the summer. After all of this, maybe I shouldn't have vacation. That is quite a bit all at once.

A lot of people think that once the end of school comes and summer vacation starts that teachers live a life of leisure. I guess that some do. Many, many others teach summer school, prepare for next school year by planning, rewriting curriculum, going to classes to catch up on latest research, prepare things for their classroom, etc. Summer is not necessarily a vacation for teachers.

I started my summer (All right, I know that the Summer Solstice doesn't officially arrive until June 20th.) by heading to school and cleaning out my classroom; dusting, rearranging, cleaning out, and minimizing. I will spend quite a bit of time organizing things, preparing learning centers, and generally planing the upcoming school year. Oops, I forgot about my reading books. You see, some of the students can get a little rough with the story books so I have to bring them home a play "Story Book Hospital" and repair many of them. This next school year our campus will be downsizing the Kindergarten from 4 classrooms to 3.

The best thing about summer is the lack of deadlines. That means if I don't feel like taping up books this morning I can do them later. Of course, If I want to do it all tonight I could, highly unlikely but I could if I wanted.

Later this summer I will be taking 57 hours of training for this next school year. Fortunately, 30 hours will qualify for a $200 stipend. That leaves 27 hours. If I can take another 3 hours I will qualify for another stipend of $500. That' $11.67 per hour. It could be better but at least I have a job for next year. Unfortunately, there are many that can't say that.

© 2008 Barry T Horst


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Crunch Time

The countdown has started and it's crunch time.

Today is Friday and the last day for school is next Wednesday. Today is our "No Referral" Incentive party. Let me tell you, there were some unhappy campers yesterday when they found out they couldn't go to the park and skating because of discipline referrals. This will be a first for me. I have never taken a class full of Kindergartners skating. I suppose it will be easier than taking Pre-Kindergartners skating; after all, Kindergartners are bigger.

Next Monday we begin practicing for our Awards/Graduation. The ceremony will be on Tuesday morning. Afterwards, we will have a reception in our classrooms.

Then the day we have been working towards all year long arrives. Wednesday, June 3, last day of school and it's an Early Release day at that. The students dismiss at 12:00 and get to take their report cards and other stuff home and then start summer vacation.

Alas, that is not the end for me though. The staff still has end of year stuff to finish and than a workday on Thursday. Since our campus will be used for summer school and then summer training we all have to make sure our rooms are in order and all supplies are secured.

Fortunately I do not change classrooms this year. I changed last year and it was a major pain. I taught Pre-K last year. Since the district took Pre-K off several campuses this year I transferred to Kindergarten. So my STUFF was moved into another Pre-K classroom whose former occupant took a job in a nearby district. This teacher left behind a lot of STUFF. I also took the place of another Kindergarten teacher who got married and moved away. Her STUFF was also moved to my new room. I spent 2 weeks last summer before school started sorting through all of this STUFF and making sense of it. So again I say, "Fortunately I do not change classrooms this year."

P.S. I sat and made Graduation Tassels for my class last night. Oh the joys of Kindergarten.© 2008 Barry T Horst


This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Please visit the Giveaway of the Day near the bottom of the left sidebar for free software downloads daily.