End of the Year

Today is the last day of school for seniors where I teach. I am really looking forward to their departure. Once the seniors are done, I will have an extra class period for planning, grading, and doing other administrative tasks at work as I have one class that is entirely seniors. Also, I won't have to find something to fill the time with them to make it look like I am still teaching the class. The class that I am talking about is an Advanced Placement class. The students in the class took the AP exam a couple of weeks ago, so they feel that they should be done. Personally, I feel that way too. I suppose I could have taught more after the exam, but they were all burned out on calculus by this time. Besides, I was told by other AP teachers at my school that once the students take the exam, they usually don't do much of anything. For a while I wasn't doing anything in this class after their exam, but last week my principal spoke with me. It seems that she found out that my students were playing cards and just talking. She told me that I had to continue teaching them until the end of the year. I had no problem with this directive. So, I resumed teaching my AP Calculus class.

Now, after talking with my calculus students, I feel that I am being singled out for some reason. They are telling me that in another of their AP classes, they are watching a Star Wars movie. I can't figure out how this is remotely related to the content of the class in question. While I know that this happens frequently, showing a movie of this type to a group, that has no relevance to the curriculum, violates copyright laws. To make me even more upset about this is that the students tell me that the movie they are watching is Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith! This means that the teacher is not only showing a movie that has nothing to do with his or her class, but that he or she is showing a pirated movie! I imagine that if this teacher gets caught, there will be hell to pay. So today, I will continue to show The Standard Deviants: Calculus Part 2. While most of the class isn't paying attention, I am at least showing something relevant to my curriculum!

For all other students, there are nine days of school remaining. We were supposed to be finished on June 2, but we have four snow days to make up. While they were nice at the time, I am really regretting having those weather-related cancellations. If we ended school on time, I would have a whole week off before I start my new job. As it is now, I'll just have a three-day weekend. I would have pushed back my start date, but as I was offered the position in January of February, they already waited a while for me to begin. Besides, if I waited another week to begin, I'd have one less week of getting paid from two jobs.

Yesterday afternoon we had our final faculty meeting of the school year. Much of it was spent talking about technology improvements for next year. I guess our student information system isn't adequate, so the school district is going to look into a web-based application to allow teachers and others to access necessary student information more easily. This will probably also allow parents to access student grades online throughout the school year. They won't have to wait until the end of a grading period anymore. I think that this will be a big benefit for parents, students, and teachers. This will really aid with parent communication. This is actually something that I would like to be involved in implementing. Of course I am leaving teaching, so I will not be a part of this. I know I will miss some aspects of teaching, so the end of this school year is somewhat bittersweet, but I'm sure I will enjoy my new career. Besides, there isn't anything keeping me from returning to teaching in the future if I should decide to do so.