May Madness

Wow! What a crazy couple of months! But the end is in sight. Fourteen more days of actual in-school stuff and that includes finals. Over the past few weeks, honors has finished The Great Gatsby and is now reading The Whistling Season in groups. Brit Lit has finished C.S. Lewis' Till We Have Faces and will start Peter Pan in groups on Monday. Am Lit will finish The Great Gatsby this week and do a short story unit the last week of classes, designed to help some of them earn big points - up to 20 each day. Anyone want to bet there are students who don't?! It has been a crazy semester and I've barely kept my nose above water, but here we are - almost finished. Honestly, it has been quite amazing. Some of my students mourned the loss of their former Lit teacher and rightly so. Having a teacher resign in the middle of the year is never easy but when it is the senior year, that is tough. However, slowly but surely, these students and I have forged ahead and learned to respect each other. One of the students sent me a card recently that said "Over the past weeks, your passion for teaching has won me over and I've really learned a lot. Thank You!" I'm not sure anyone can understand what a big deal this was to me. I knew this young man was initially quite skeptical, and his note was a huge encouragement to me. This summer I plan to work diligently on my first semester classes so I don't have to rush in preparation. I hope to have all my power point presentations created and projects lined up for the entire semester. It's a big job but it will be so helpful to go into the year with this already in place.