Spring Break Came Just in Time

I had heard stories and myths about the last week before Spring Break from other teachers and my week was comparably crazy. My TM and I got the formal observations “out of the way” early in the week because there was going to be so much going on. Monday was a normal day of classes, Tuesday was the deadline for report cards and a lockdown drill- as well as my midterm due date, Wednesday and Thursday were speech days, aka assessment bonanza for me, and Friday was wrap up and St. Patrick’s Day Spirit Day. I am exhausted.

            A number of interesting things happened that made an impact on my teaching. The first was the final processing of my midterm. I found that writing the midterm was trickier than writing the final for 490 as I knew I needed to show progress in my examples of certification ready. I also felt a little pressured to have most of my goal areas certification ready as I really only have 3 weeks left after spring break. On that note, I am already thinking about the final as I need to start writing it shortly after spring break. Overall, the process was great as it helped myself and mentors narrow down exactly what I need to work on as I near the end of this journey.

            On Friday last week, my TM and other mentors received an email from a parent notifying us that she and her husband had recently separated. She was explaining why her daughter had been missing more school than usual as it was obviously making an impact on the family and wanted us to be aware in case we were noticing a difference in her demeanor at school- which we had. This came as a sort of relief as this student who was normally bubbly and bright had seemed quite depressed recently. The parent arranged a meeting with all of us and this took place on Thursday. On Wednesday, the student performed her speech, which was on the health risks of smoking, and in her conclusion added some very personal information that her dad has been recently diagnosed with cancer that is in four different places in his body. She also mentioned that the smoking “makes him a little crazy.” This didn't alarm the students because we had covered smoking in our addictive substances unit but my TM and I exchanged looks. When the meeting came around on Thursday the parent started with saying she knew that we know most of the story now because of this speech. It turned out that the student was being very secretive in her school work and had not shared her speech topic with her mother, who then was bombarded with questions from other parents as the kids had gone home and said “guess what’s wrong with ____’s dad!” The parent then explained that the dad had left about a month ago and then came back and threw a lot of emotional information at the whole family- very detailed- and the kids were very affected, understandably. The mother asked me if she could see a copy of the speech as her daughter had not shown it to her. Overall, this situation was very humbling because it showed me how involved we are, as teachers, in students’ lives. This girl had not been comfortable expressing her feelings to her mother but felt that the classroom was a safe outlet to let the pressure off. She did it in a respectful manner as it made her speech very powerful and the mother respected it as well, just wanted to be informed. As I move forward from this, I now have a very strong relationship with the mother as well as the student.

           

The last big thing from this week was our St. Patrick’s Day celebration. I had contacted the Leadership team teacher whose students are in charge of making announcements on the PA system and the director of the student council to get the whole school involved in a spirit day. Andrew then had students make posters for the halls in his fine arts class and I designed a scavenger hunt for the afternoon. We ended up combining schedules for the afternoon so all of our grade 6’s played a grade wide capture the flag game- it was awesome! It all went off pretty well, but just added to my exhaustion! Spring Break came up just in time!