Eventually I will stop talking about end of year testing....

 Yesterday we had a leadership meeting after school.  Matt had us report on our celebrations surrounding test data.  Basically he wanted to hear from those who had either met or exceeded their goals.

I had nothing to add.

It is depressing.  We didn't reach our goal; we tried so hard!

In order to stop perseverating on the unmet goals, here are some other things to report on.

The preschool teacher gave all of us a personalized and homemade keychain.  So kind!

My hardest student (the one I talk about often) had the most growth of any boy in math.  He went from well below grade level to proficient at grade level and it feels like the biggest win in the world (until I start thinking about those goals again....).

Also, Emma sends me stuff like this:

me if I were a british person with an unsuccessful tea business in a rap battle against someone who refused to shop at my store and I wanted them to feel bad about it:

i'm losing pounds like i'm on a diet/i sell a cuppa but you never buy it

It's hard not to be happy when Emma is in my world.

Times are changing

 Mark helped me assemble end of year gifts for my students last night.  We are in the winding down scenes.  We are finishing up our last tests.  I am trying to declutter my classroom a bit.  We are feeling collective angst about some test scores and cheering each other on about the good ones.  (The disappointing ones hold more weight in our hearts.)

It has been unseasonably warm.  The weather all year has been sort of wacky.  

I haven't been sleeping well and I think it is a confluence of a lot of circumstances, but it is also a fact that my routine is changing and I am a toddler.  It throws me off when my routine changes.

Despite being thrown off, there are a lot of things to look forward to this summer.  I am excited about some trips and looking forward to spending time in Starr Valley.  I want to roast marshmallows for s'mores and watch the sunset and fireworks from our deck.

I want to eat berries.

The last field trip

 Yesterday we went to the Bean Museum at BYU.  I had a plan that I would be with my hardest student and I had the rest of the students divided between the parent volunteers.  One of the parents was sick and couldn't make it so I had the hardest student and her group.

It was hard.

Before we left, he told me he felt like throwing up.  A glimmer of hope!  Maybe my day wouldn't be as hard!  His mom was at work and he insisted he couldn't call her and he insisted he was feeling better.  I didn't really believe him, but I didn't know what else to do.

He rallied health wise, because keeping up with him was the challenge of the day.  I had a sweet boy who wanted to look at everything, another boy who just wandered off at every juncture, a climber and then that hardest boy who just ran around and touched everything he wasn't supposed to touch.  

It was exhausting.

We finally left the museum and went to a park for lunch and to let them play.  It was hot--near 90.  A lot of my students were spinning and spinning on the playground equipment and then they lay on the grass moaning because they were so dizzy.  We walked back to the school and the students were sort of wilting in the hotter day than they've been used to.  My hardest student pulled away from me the entire way back to the school.  I had an iron grip on his arm and he seriously would have fallen over if I'd let go because he was pulling so much against me.

Sometimes I wonder why he isn't ever absent, but then I realize that if I were his mother, he would never be absent.

I read to them with the lights dim when we got back to the school.  They got a lot of drinks and several of them told me they were going to throw up so I placed the garbage next to them.  No one threw up.  We survived the day.

We only have one more Monday.

Weekend

 We enjoyed having Braeden around for part of our weekend.  His friend Joe, also a student at UC Davis, came for the conference and stayed with us too, but we didn't see him until Saturday morning.  He came to our house after we were asleep and they left before we woke up Friday morning.  (They went to the temple before their conference started.)

Friday, we picked Braeden up at BYU and we went to dinner at Bumblebee (Joe was meeting up with friends).  My K Pop fries were spicier than normal or I am getting wimpier.  It could be either thing.

We came home and just visited and enjoyed each other.

Saturday morning, before anyone else was awake, Braeden and I took a walk.  It was a lovely morning and so nice to walk along and chat.  We drove to Salt Lake and met Emma at Casa del Tamal for lunch.  It has turned into one of our favorite places and now we are wondering if Edgar would like it because he is the gauge for us of how good Mexican food is. 

We didn't know Joe would be joining us for lunch so the reservation was for five instead of six.  They didn't have a six person table for us, but seated us outside.  People with sunglasses sat on one side of the table.  Adam accidentally bumped Mark's soda all over Emma.  It was a bit of a rocky start, but we got it together and had a good lunch.

After dropping Braeden and Joe off at the airport, we did our Saturday errands and then Adam and Mark and I took another walk around the cemetery.  It is just prime walking weather.

Saturday afternoon, the sacrament meeting program fell apart and Adam asked me to speak in church.  One of the...perks...of being married to the bishop.  

Sunday morning he said, "I hope that won't ruin your Mother's Day."

I said it reminded me of being a mother.  You are constantly thrown fast balls and curve balls and change ups.

He said, "Look at you, using baseball terminology."

My talk went OK.  I felt a little hollowed out all day, missing my mom.

We took a walk after dinner and in talking about graves to visit on Memorial Day, I told our kids that my dad had told me my grandma's Uncle Tom and Aunt Mary were buried in the Salt Lake cemetery.  I was telling them a story about them, but was fuzzy on the details.  I almost said, "I will ask my mom."

Then I remembered.

My dad called to wish me Happy Mother's Day.  I asked how he was and he said, "Fine."

I said, "You always say you're fine, but are you?"

He said, "I might as well be."

So my dad preached a sermon in one sentence and I'm going to try to be more like him.

Grateful Friday

 Yesterday was Marianne's birthday.  I'm grateful for her!  (And I'll be grateful when she is home so I can talk to her more.)

Braeden is here for a few days.  I'm grateful to have him around and hug him.  Braeden hugs are enthusiastic to the point of teeth rattling sometimes, but I am here for it.

We took a walk after dinner.  Just missing our three girls and the Young Prince.

And guess what?  We got an email that said we could sit in the massage chair even if we hadn't kissed the frog.  Miriam and Alissa and I hightailed it in there after school--and traffic duty, because it's our week.  We had to wait our turn so we dragged chairs into the hall and sat outside the room so no one would take our spot in line.  You would think with our commitment to getting massages we would have just taken the picture, but you would be wrong.

Miriam is 6'2" and Alissa is about 6' tall.  I'm the short one.

But I fit in the massage chair better, so there's that.  On airplanes and in massage chairs, it pays to not be too tall.

We enjoyed our 15 minute stint in the chairs, then we went and graded our math acadience tests and I felt all the tension return to my shoulders and neck.  

It didn't go well.  It is a timed test and during it I had about three students just looking around the room and looking at me.  

Ugh.

It's always like this in May

Yesterday we had a faculty meeting after school and Matt outlined all the things on the calendar between now and the end of the school year.

It felt like getting hit by tiny pellets.  Not painful, but the cumulative effect was real.  

Then he told us that since we're getting a new HVAC this summer at the school (yay!), we need to take home anything that can't withstand a lot of heat for the no AC summer.

He told us that since we're getting new ceiling tiles in all the rooms, we will have lots and lots of dust and we need to cover everything.

So that is all a bit overwhelming, but then I remembered Mark.  I told him I would hire him to come and help me and he said sure.

It is teacher appreciation week and I feel grateful for the efforts being made, but also I feel too tired to be bothered.  If we take a selfie of ourselves kissing a plastic frog, we can have 15 minutes in a massage chair.

Not worth it.  

Taking a selfie of kissing a frog doesn't sound like something I would do. (The third grade teachers all concur and Miriam, the eternal optimist, said, "Are we scrooges?")

Maybe.

Bah. Humbug.

Alissa said, "Can't they appreciate us without making us do dumb tasks?"

Just your average Tuesday in May

 Believe it or not, this is me trying to keep my desk clean.

It gets away from me every single day.

We did more testing in the morning.  One boy was pretty out of it and refused to work and I could tell he was sick.  He also refused to admit he was sick.  Sometimes it is clear that parents are at work and they are not allowed to call home.  It breaks my heart a little.

By 10:00, he was sitting there, quietly crying.  I took him to the nurse's room where he could lie down.  The lady in the office that speaks Spanish called his mom and she was indeed at work, but far away and couldn't be there for a while.  The sweet boy just sat there and wept.  I asked him if I could do anything for him.  He didn't want anything.  It got to be lunchtime and I tried to get him lunch, but he didn't want any.  I asked the office ladies to call his 5th grade brother down.  I thought he could maybe cheer up his brother.  This student is the third one in the family and I love them all completely.  I wish that I could follow their mother around and have her teach me her ways, because I have never met such sweet boys.  They have a kindergarten or maybe first grade little brother and I hope I get him in a few years because I want the entire set!

The 5th grader was the picture of sympathy like I knew he would be.  He spoke to his brother softly in Spanish.  I asked him to ask the brother if he wanted to come to my classroom and watch something on Disney+ on my computer while everyone else was at lunch.  He didn't.  Finally, he just bent over his brother and wrapped him in his arms and told him he loved him.

It was the sweetest thing I've seen in a very long time.

His mom eventually was able to make it and I hope the dear boy feels better soon!

A girl had sauntered in right when we were finishing testing.  I asked her why she was late.  (They know we're testing!)

She said, "Oh, my parents went to the temple and then we all went to McDonald's."

O-kaaaaaaaay. 

A girl dropped her completely full water bottle on the carpet and I handed her a paper towel from the classroom roll which is the least absorbent material probably on earth.  Happily we live in a desert and while the wet spot was still there when I left for the day, it will dry eventually.

A girl brought me a beautiful bouquet of flowers for Teacher Appreciation Week. She included a card that thanked me for teaching her the metric system.

A few students looked closely at the flowers and wondered if there was pollen in there.  (The day before we'd had a science lesson about pollinators.)

At lunch recess, the aide on duty confiscated a glass bottle of liquid some my students were taking swigs of and sharing around.

It was hot sauce.  

Valentina's hot sauce.  One of them had brought it from home.

I had recess duty in the afternoon.  One of my boys, who mostly sits morosely by himself in the middle of the grass every recess, was invited by a girl in Miriam's class to play four square.  

It kind of made my day.

On the heels of that, a girl in my class came outside with her fingers pinched on the least amount of fabric possible on her sweatshirt.  She said, "It got toilet water on it."

I didn't really understand.  "It dropped in the toilet?"

She said, "Yes, I put it on the toilet paper holder and it fell in."

These are the kinds of problems one doesn't get taught about when you are getting a degree in elementary education.  I have a healthy stash of plastic grocery bags and I put it inside and hung it up and reminded her to take it home when the bell rang, because she was merrily leaving without it.

Just another day of highs and lows; chaos and sweetness; you won't believe this and I can't make this stuff up.