And just like that, another year has passed me by. It's almost Memorial Day and I still get that giddy feeling in my stomach that school will almost be out for the summer. This time of year was one of my favorites as a teacher for many reasons.
End-of-year testing was done. We could work on projects that were a little more creative and fun. Students are well trained on classroom procedures which makes classroom management easier. We would go to Hogle Zoo and This is the Place Park for our Salt Lake City field trip. One of my favorites, the weather was warming up enough to play scatterball with the students (Insert clip of Billy Madison pelting kids with balls).
The last day of school was always fun for me as well because we would do three things. I would give out awards to the students for different achievements which included academics as well as behavior. (This may be controversial now, but only a handful of kids got awards in my class) I would hold our final auction of the year which was the biggest and best auction of the year. Lastly, I would create a yearbook video for the class using pictures and videos I had taken throughout the year. I would spend a month making this video and the mere process of making it would choke me up a little because it would be a reminder of how far we had come as a class that year. Watching it with my students on that last day was always a bonding moment for our class because sometimes you're so caught up in the minutia of the day-to-day that you forget all of the fun you had along the way. (See Example Video Below)
It made me think back to when I was a student. I don't remember learning the alphabet, the phases of the moon, or long division. I know I learned that stuff because I can still recall all of those items...except the moon stuff. (Science was never my strongest subject) What I do remember were the field trips, story-telling assemblies, and fun classroom parties put on by the teacher and parent volunteers.
One thing I realized at the school I taught at was that we had a unique and positive school culture. I think this is mainly because our principal and staff made it a priority to create these fun activities that cement lasting memories with our students. We sacrificed our own time to blow up balloons to make professional-caliber decorations for Valentine's Day. We spent weeks setting up our spook alley in the basement that the neighborhood would use after school for a food drive. My brother would spend all year creating a yearbook video for the school to watch at the end of year, which left everyone with a salty discharge in their eyes. To this day, whenever I see an old student from Ellis, whether they are 15 or 28, they ask if my brother and I still make the Garbage Monster movies.
Without a doubt, every year the media will do a story about whether or not we should be celebrating Halloween, Valentine's Day, or Christmas in our schools. Now that I've been out of the classroom for eight years, I can affirmatively say that I don't miss being in the classroom as much as I thought I would. But every time a holiday approaches, I long for my teaching days because those were the days we got to have a little fun where we didn't have to focus so much on the curriculum. We could just focus on bonding with our students and create some lasting memories.
I mean, it's a long video, but you can't tell me that our students didn't have a blast at Ellis.
