End of Year Blues

The last day of school is eleven days away, a week from this Friday.  I used to get blue, knowing I had just a few precious days left with my wonderful classes.  I would miss them so!  They weren't as diligent as usual by the time the last few weeks arrived, but they still learned and we had fun.

That was then, this is now.  We are in the fourth week of testing, including end-of-instruction tests and AP.  After spring break, we no longer had a tutorial for a break between the second and third hours.  Classes last an additional five minutes.  Students and teachers drooped from the start of Daylight Savings Time in combination with longer classes and fewer breaks.  It's too much.  Fully one-sixth of the school year, the last six weeks, is a drudgery without relief.

Then, just when heads arise momentarily from the weight of so much testing, bam! It's time for graduation, and the last few days are blighted by the brain-death coma that seniors enter in anticipation of commencement before May has even gotten underway.  The bulk of the testing has been over for a week, but there's no conception that anything can be accomplished in the dozen days remaining.

When I came in this morning, a Monday, I surveyed a cheerfully resigned group of students.  They bravely held up under the day's activities, which, I admit, included a new game that was able to engage them for today.  By the third hour, resignation had bloomed into apathy.  None of us wanted to do anything.  We kept going, with no love of it in our hearts.  Two periods later, no one is making eye contact with the teacher. In the last class of the day, competition for points is the only motivator, and the social drive drowns out any learning that is possibly happening.

So, this is my scream, my rant.  It doesn't have to be this way!!!  The end of the year should be a relaxed and happy time for us all to enjoy the fruits of a successful school year, not the time to ramp up restrictions and demands.  If the end of year activities could be scheduled at the end of the year, say the last two to three weeks, learning could continue pretty much as usual.  There is no way to recover from testing and arduous scheduling demands, when everything else(Prom, Awards, State Athletic Competitions, graduation, etc.) has to be completed by May 15.  There just isn't.  For the administration to expect teachers to come up with new and exciting learning experiences is beyond the realm of reason.  In what fantasy land can you wear me to a nub, and then expect me to pop up fresh as a daisy?  It's not happening.  Plan something yourself.  Whenever you can do those 60 interviews in two weeks, and then put on a song-and-dance show to pump me up, maybe I'll try for it.  Right now it's survival mode for everyone, and isn't that a shame?