And that's a wrap!

WOOHOO!! Another school year over!! This one started off really rough, but it ended very well.

I got everything passed out today -- leftover homeworks, workbooks, profile stuff I had been keeping, projects, report cards, etc -- and the kids pretty much had a free day. We made autograph sheets, and the kids went around signing each other's sheets with notes like, "Stay cool" and "Have a good summer!"

A couple of notes I got were in the past tense, which made me wonder what they were trying to say -- "You were a good teacher." "You looked nice when I first met you."

Then we had our pizza party. I provided the pizza, the kids brought chips and drinks. Like enough to feed a small army. I think each kid drank about 6 kool-aids/capri sun, and there were still 8 boxes to take home.

Then a big round of hugs, and they were gone! YESSSS!!

Survived another year!

Almost there

I remember back in September, when it seemed we would NEVER reach the end of the school year. And now here we are, only one day away from the end of the road.

We had our awards ceremony today, and that went really well. I wound up getting on stage 3 times -- once to fill in for my partner who wasn't there, once for my own class, and once to present the overall 3rd grade award to one of my kids. It was a tough room, too. Nobody even giggled when I said, "Remember me? I'm back!" when I went up on stage the second time.

Some of the awards were just certificates, some came with ribbons, and some came with medals. So of course I had to answer, "Why didn't I get one of THOSE?" several times after the ceremony.

Tomorrow will ideally be a really relaxed day. We are having a little pizza party for my 2 groups in honor of how well they did on the TAKS tests. Only 1 of my kids didn't pass it, and she later qualified for special ed! And only 3 of my kids didn't pass the reading test! So we are very proud of the kids and their efforts.

As long as I don't demolish any 5th graders, tomorrow should be a very good end to the school year.

Things I would have missed if the world HAD ended on Saturday

Hey, even us stupid Catholics knew that nobody could actually predict Armaggedon Day! Still, there was a small sigh of relief when 6PM (arbitrary time zone, anyone?) rolled around and the globe kept on spinning.

Here are a few things I would really have missed out on if the word HAD ended this weekend:

1) The finale of The Event -- I know that this show has already been cancelled and will not be back next year, but I've stuck with it for this long, I'm going to see it through to the bitter end!

2) Mr. Jim's pizza for dinner tonight -- Mmmmmmm, Mr. Jim's is the best!

3) The Avengers -- by the time this movie comes out, in summer 2012, it will almost be time for the MAYAN prediction of the end of the world, but if I go see The Avengers on opening day, I'll at least get that thrill before dying horribly.

4) Receiving my TAKS scores -- The scores came in today (Finally!), and while I don't think I'm supposed to say what they are just yet, I will say that they were restaurant quality. I'm very happy.

5) Finishing Learn Me Gooder -- I'd hate for the world to end without me even getting a chance to show off such lines as "The Lion King 3 and 7/8: Simba Swallows His Pride."

6) March Madness -- I know it's still a ways away, but without the NCAA basketball tournament, the world may as WELL end!!

7) Having a kid -- I'm still a newlywed, technically, and I'd like to be able to have a kid (or 2). My wife and I have recently started trying. We've put in a lot of quarters, but so far, the claw keeps coming up empty. Maybe we're doing something wrong.

8) Jeopardy -- I still want to be a contestant on Jeopardy before the world ends. Of course, once I'm on, I'd like the chance to spend my winnings before the world ends as well.

9) Mountain Dew -- No more world = no more Mountain Dew. Did anybody else just shed a tear?

Anything else I should add to the list?

The Final Monday!

Yes indeedy, today was our final Monday of classes in the 2009-2010 school year. Of course, that is because we have a holiday next Monday -- Memorial Day. We unfortunately still have TWO more Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, and for us teachers, Fridays.

But they should just fly right by! (insert choruses of "Yeah, right.") Tomorrow is Career Day -- which my kids see on the calendar and pronounce as one who cars -- a carrer. Wednesday is Field Day, at least the latter half of the day is. Next week is an awards day.

I was incorrect about one of my comments on the last post. I did not have 3 kids who scored a perfect 100 on their math tests. Those 3 actually missed one. Always hard to tell when the scaled score is out of like 832, and it's not liner, so each question doesn't count for the same amount of points. Oh, and apparently one only needed a 58 or so to pass the reading test this year. Wow.

We will spend a lot of our class time this week decorating our hallway for the International Festival on Friday. My kids have made hockey players (for Canada) and palace guards and bobbies for England. Currently, we're working on bulls for Spain. I showed one class a video on youtube of the running of the bulls, and they laughed and laughed whenever someone got trampled or flipped by a bull. Kids these days.

Still, as little time as we have left, I find myself jealous of teachers who are already out...

Top 10 ways to close out the school year

Down here in Texas, we have crested the hill as it pertains to standardized testing. Yes, there are still some kids who need to RE-take the TAKS, if they are at a grade level that requires passing. And the lower grades are taking ITBS this week. But if not now, then very soon, all teachers will be wondering the same thing -- what do I do for the rest of the year?

Allow me to make a few suggestions. Here are ten ideas for things to do for the next few weeks to keep you and your kids occupied from the morning bell till the afternoon buses leave.

10) Teach your kids Advanced Quantum Mechanics. If the kids' jaws hang open in disbelief, comment that they will comprehend THIS lesson equally as well as they have comprehended everything else this year. (Note: this requires a level of sarcasm that may elude some teachers.)

9) Ask the kids to measure the perimeter of the school -- in millimeters.

8) Have a Bill Nye the Science Guy video marathon. After that, have a Magic School Bus marathon. Then show every episode of Reading Rainbow you can get your hands on. Time allowing, screen old episodes of 3-2-1 Contact. Bonus points if your kids learn the theme song to the Bloodhound Gang before the end of the year.

7) Commit fully to physical education -- OK kids, let's see how many times we can walk around the school in 2 and a half hours! Ready? Go!

6) Give each child one volume of the encyclopedia and a spiral notebook. Ask him/her to transfer everything to the spiral notebook, including pictures. Take off points for spelling.

5) Give kids a clipboard with a new survey every morning. Their job is to survey the entire faculty and student population. Once the complaints start (from other faculty members), task the kids with creating visual presentations of the acquired data.

4) Napping contests. Whoever sleeps the longest and most silently wins a prize each day.

3) Science experiment -- How many pieces of blank white paper can you completely darken using a single crayon? Do different colors give different results?

2) If you teach a bilingual class, spend the next few weeks having THEM teach YOU their native language. Appear to grasp the vocabulary or pronunciation perfectly one day, but then forget it completely the next. EX: on Tuesday, say the Spanish word for red as "rojo." On Wednesday, insist that the Spanish word for red is "eplok."

1) Make a flier that says, "Last day of school -- May 14." Send home.

School's out for summer, is hot water in my future?

WOOHOO!!

Wednesday was our last day of school (controlled chaos, of course), and yesterday was our teacher close-up-shop day. Today is officially the first day without classes! Naturally, I have spent most of the day in bed with a nasty cough! WOOHOO!!

Well, I've always been of a mind that I would rather be sick on a NON-school day than a school day, so I'm pretty much ok with it, and I have lots of time to recuperate now.

Speaking of recuperating, I hope to have a steady flow of hot water in my house once again sometime soon...

About 3 weeks ago, my hot water heater burst. Just sprung a leak like a bad fishing boat and shot water all over my garage. Hard to take a cold shower at 6 in the morning on a school day!

So I called up my home warranty people and got them to send out a plumber. I couldn't take the day off, so my dad house sat for me on the Friday before Memorial Day. That day, in addition to the plumber, an HVAC guy was coming to fix my air conditioning. THAT, thankfully, was fixed that day.

The plumber took a look at my water heater and said it would need to be replaced and brought up to code, and that he needed new parts. He made an appointment to come back the following Monday and take care of it. I was wondering if he knew that day was Memorial Day, but he insisted that he worked his own hours and he could do it.

When he hadn't shown up by 3 on Monday, I called and found out that he couldn't get the parts because his office was closed. SINCE IT WAS A HOLIDAY!! But at least he was going to be able to come over the next day AFTER school, so I wouldn't have to ask my dad to house sit again.

He came over with a new water heater, took a while to get it replaced, added a drip pan, an outside line, etc -- all those expensive pieces to bring it up to code. Then he brought me out to the garage to show me that it was installed and done. Flipped the power on, and it promptly fizzled.

If you're a Star Wars fan, you know that scene where Luke and his uncle have just bargained with the Jawas to buy C-3PO and that red R2 droid? The red droid starts rolling and immediately blows a circuit and starts smoking? Well, that's pretty much what happened with my heater. There was a giant pop and the smell of burnt wiring.

So another day of no hot water. But the guy was going to come back the next day with a replacement. When he came back though, he didn't have a new heater, just a new heating element for the part that had blown up. He replaced it, we walked around the house, and every faucet was giving forth miraculous heated water. SUCCESS!!

Well, not so fast. The next morning, I turned on the shower, and it was warm. About 5 minutes into my shower, it started getting cooler, cooler, colder. I was out of hot water. I called the guy that night, and he told me that I needed to open up the control panel and press the reset button.

Odd, but I did, and I had hot water the next morning. A full shower's worth! SUCCESS!!

Well, not so fast. No more hot water when I came home that night.

Called the guy the next day, but with it being Saturday, didn't really expect to hear back. I discovered that if I hit the reset button each night, then I WOULD have hot water the next morning. However, I really didn't think that playing Desmond Hume and pushing a button every 108 minutes (Lost fan? Eh? Eh?) constituted a "fixed" hot water heater situation.

Called the guy on Monday during my planning period and got ahold of him. He told me that it was his day off and he was out of town, but he would try to swing by my place that evening to check things out. Didn't see him that night.

Called the next day and left a message. Never heard from him.

Which brings us to yesterday, when I finally called the warranty people again and told them what was happening. They called the plumbing company, and come to find out -- this guy no longer works for them!! I have no idea if he quit, or was fired, or what, but he was obviously NEVER going to return my call.

So now I have a NEW guy scheduled to come out on Monday and hopefully fix things once and for all.

Cuz I'm getting a little tired of opening the heater and pushing that darn red button over and over and over.