The end is in sight...

The first year is almost over: I'm only going to be in the classroom with the kids for 4 1/2 more days (tomorrow, Wednesday morning, and the first 3 days of next week). Much of that will be cleaning up and taking care of business. We leave early Thursday morning for Austin and San Antonio and get back Saturday night--should be a fun trip and my kids are really looking forward to it (the ones that are going; thanks to my mentor, we were able to get some more funding, and 8 of my kids are going).

I'm just worn out. I get a few days off before I start teaching summer school. I agreed to teach summer school for a couple reasons: I should get to teach the kids who will be in my class next year and jump-start them with writing and English in general; I could use the money; and I'll be in Houston anyway, since I have to take classes for certification until the end of July. I think I get a four-day weekend before a one-day training and then starting summer school on Thursday 5/31, but I'm not positive on the dates. At any rate, it's only a month... and hopefully I will be in my room so I can start prepping it for next year early.

Has it been successful? Kind of. I can really feel that I have a good relationship with most of the students, which is positive. It was tough at the beginning of the year to get them to do anything, mainly because I didn't know how to tell them to; now it's a lot easier. I have a lot of changes in organizational and parental involvement plans for next year that I'm excited about, but at the same time, there will be more pressure. But at least I'll be able to hit the ground running in September, and I have a couple months to work out details...

Scores are in.

11/22 pass writing (February)--this required passing both the grammar and the composition
13/22 pass reading (April)
19/22 pass math (April)

A little disappointing to me personally, but not horrible. Some kids cried, some kids jumped up and down. High-stakes testing does bad things to kids.

My student wins a scholarship!

One of my students went to a sketching competition sponsored by the Museum of Fine Arts a couple of weekends ago. The art teacher at our school (we currently have art as an ancillary) found out about the competition and recommended that he go. I called up the parent a few days beforehand and reinforced it (good thing, too--she said they weren't planning to take him because they didn't think he was eligible. That is my small role if he becomes successful).

He is a good kid, but very easily distracted and disorganized. He's such an artistic learner that he doesn't do well at all with visual or logical learning, and is very inconsistent with his reading (his Stanford scores were the lowest in the class, I think because of this and because of getting distracted).

Anyway, he gets a free art class with the MFA's art school, I think this fall. Awesome!