The last week of school

Yesterday my team and I were talking before school.  We all agreed that this is not our favorite week.  We are less teachers and more camp counselors.  Basically we are just trying to keep things going.  For science we talked about pushes and pulls and force and I had those little frogs you push down on and they jump.  I made a bracket and we had a competition.  A little bit educational.

My hardest student was gone.  It was an amazing day.  Remarkable.  I kept wondering where half the class was.  

He was the only one absent.

Never let anyone tell you one person can't make a difference!

In order to balance the aggravation scales, I didn't have that extra measure of energy sapping, but I have lost our mail key!

It is so frustrating.  Losing things is the worst.  We have a locked mailbox down the street and I always keep the mail key in a little compartment in my car.  For reasons beyond my understanding, we don't have a spare.  But in nearly 12 years of living here, I've never once lost the mail key.

I have looked everywhere. Multiple times.  I have looked all over my car and in my bag and every coat pocket.  Everywhere.  The best I can determine, maybe I accidentally threw it in the recycling bin when I was recycling junk mail.  (Although I always leave it in the car, so I don't know why I wouldn't have done that.  Except I didn't.)

I need to go to the post office in person, which feels like adding insult to injury.  They will likely have to drill it out and issue a new key and it will take "7 to 14 days" and I just want to hit my head against the wall.

Ugh.

At least my hardest student was absent.

Also, we had our animal showcase.  Each student had an art project about their animal and they had written a paragraph about the animal they had researched.  They did a great job.  Their parents came to see the projects.  The students were super nervous, which I didn't really understand.  Then I realized some of them were nervous their parents wouldn't come.  And several of the parents didn't come.

The parents who did come went around and looked at other students' work which was so kind.  One of the mothers in particular was so friendly and made even the most reticent students come alive and talk about their projects.  It made me happy.

There are a lot of ways in this world to be a hero.