My Last Full Week

The teacher is teaching fifth grade gifted next year and she has to move to a new room. Her students are amazing. Within the forty-five minutes, they packed up all her library books into boxes, labeled them and stacked them in the back of the room...along with other supplies around the classroom. As for me, I've been cleaning and organizing her closet in the pod, sorting her supplies and either putting them away or packing them. As a class, we have been on a mission trying to finish the required tests for each grade level, get grades put in and submitted. We are not sure how we did it, but we accomplished it. The students are a bit rowdy the last couple of weeks. They think that they are done for the year even though there was still much to do. Of course there are the over achievers but many have lost their motivation. Behavior wise, they managed themselves a little less with a few more disciplinary referrals than normal. I guess this is normal, right? We all get antsy towards the end of the year.
This past week, the students had their graduation and dance party. However, I was a little bummed that I could not attend either event due to SLI in Berea, Kentucky. Nonetheless, SLI turned out very well. Rina, Amanda, Savannah and I drove to the airport at 4am (way to early for my liking!) and met up with Tiffany. There we went through security (which I'm proud to say that I didn't get stopped and wanded!), and was headed to our desitination. Berea is a cute little town, much like DeLand. We stayed in Berea College's dorm rooms; our lovely coordinators and directors were forced to move due to a major cockroach problem in their rooms, hallway and bathroom. Gross, I know. This year, we celebrated the 20th Bonnerversary as well as Wayne's retirement. The workshops that I attended contained good information that I hope to implement for this upcoming year. In our congress meeting, Jarian, Amanda B, Tiffany and I came up with an idea for a new project. I'm hoping that I can start preparing so that we can be ready to go in the fall. I also attended a workshop that gave us some creative ideas for reflections which I hope we can do as well!