Hooray, No Kids!

It was a busy end of the year: assessments, toggling (like grading), cleaning the classroom, etc. This is the first year that I've actually been chomping at the bit to get rid of kids. I loved this year but it was one of the most challenging and emotionally draining years since I've been teaching here. The kids and I finished up our classroom memory book titled, "Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Did You See?" That took us three months to finish and the kids and I were both glad it was done! We had a picnic on the beach two days before school ended and had the rest of the day to toggle. The picnic was fun. We played with the bat and ball, ate lunch together, watched a HS student skid across open water on his snowmachine. (If you ask me, it's so stupid because you can ruin your machine.) We also roasted marshmallows. (It brings back memories of campfires with the Grandparents). On our last day the kids wanted to make muffins so we made chocolate chip muffins because we were reading a phonetic book called Hot Muffins. They enjoyed it. We finished Firday May 16th and the teachers had a work day on Saturday. I had a lot to do and unfortunately I did not finish.

On Sunday, I left for an extra week of work in Unalakleet. I was asking myself, "What was I thnking? I don't want to go. I"m exhausted!" I kept reminding myself it is $1,200 for my trip this summer. When we go for inservices or workshops we usually sleep in teacher's classrooms. For two nights we had to sleep in the gym because Unalakleet was still having school. I didn't sleep both nights because everything noise echos! So the third night I got to sleep in an Elementary classroom and was that nice or what.

This wokshop focused on making scoring guides for a lot of the standards in each of the 10 content areas. I worked on the Cultural Awareness standards and had an awesome group of paraprofesstionals and teachers to work with. We worked well together and it was fun. It was very challenging also because as the levels got higher my knowledge of the standards decreased. I teach level one of cultural awareness so at one point it got challenging and a little frustrating because it took 1 1/2 hours to understand what the standard was asking students to know and do. We made a total of 24 scoring guides for standards in levels 1-7. I don't want to look at another scoring guide until September!

It was also nice to see Becky and Barb (former teachers in Koyuk). I enjoyed meeting new people, eating at a pizza restaurant, eating cheesecake. I'm so glad I did not gain a pound each day I was there like the last time I had inservice in April. I watched carefully what I ate and maintained my weight. I also had fun exercising with Becky using DVD's. We also went for a walk on the beach and found green, purple, white, brown beach glass. Becky is an expert at finding it. I on the other hand cannot spot it as quick as her.