Choices

It's the end of the year. I'm moving both classrooms and into my first home.  The students are becoming increasingly squirrely with each passing day.  We have one more field trip and a lot of loose ends to tie up. There is simply too much to do and not enough minutes in the day. It's frustrating that I want to give my students emotional closure on their novels and give them time to finish their books, but I'm at odds with others on this view point.  I want to keep teaching as long as possible, but that's not being supported.

Our last day is Wednesday, June 4th.  In my mind, that means I can realistically teach up until Friday, May 30th. I can finish novels with students, retest on assessments, and allow them to do some project based learning about their novels.  With everything wrapped up by the 30th, that would allow me the weekend to grade their final projects and have scores in by Monday the 2nd.  We'd use the last week of school to present our novel projects, sign  yearbooks, attend our awards assembly, and reflect upon our learning for the year.  

However, this is not what I'm expected to do.  Every assessment is supposed to be done, and graded, by the 28th.  The 28th is a full week ahead of when report cards go home.

When I expressed how busy the fifth grade has been, my words were shrugged off.  In the past few weeks, we've had CRTs (standardized testing), the writing proficiency, field trips, Discovery Education testing, KIC (science inquiry project), Aimsweb end of the year benchmarks and I DRA'd seventy children.  Plain and simple, fifth grade had the most work to do.  Not complaining, just a statement of fact.  We've been quite busy. We were not given assistance like other grade levels because sadly, blatant favoritism exists.  I wish it didn't, but the favoritism is running rampant these days and I somehow found myself on the other side.  Perhaps it's because I'm leaving schools.  Perhaps it's because I speak my mind and stick up for myself.  I am not being treated fairly at my work and it's one of the contributing factors for my change in school location.  Regardless of how I'm being treated, I'm doing my best to focus on making the best instructional decisions for my students.  All my choices are made to best serve the interests of those thirty one rowdy fifth graders whom I teach and adore to the best of my abilities.

I wish there was more understanding.  I'm asking for time until the second (which is still days before report cards go home) not because I'm lazy.  It's not because I'm being a procrastinator.  It's because with everything going on, we didn't want to over test our students.  We, as a grade level, felt we would get accurate results by spreading out the assessments (as best we could) and not overwhelm them by testing all day, every day.  I'm asking for more time to allow students to finish their novels and give us the chance to meet about the endings.  I'm not okay with just taking away their books and saying we ran out of time.  That's not fair to my students.  I'm not okay with depriving them of an opportunity to share about their novels and reflect on their learning throughout the year.  I 'm not okay with skipping the "how we've grown as learners" end of year reflection.  

My choice is to keep teaching as long as possible, even if it means I give myself an extra long weekend of grading.  

My choice is to provide emotional, literary closure to my students.  

My choice is to allow them time to share about their favorite books and engage in conversations about reading.

My choice is, to the best of my ability, wrap up our year together with discussions and reflections to help them grow as readers and learners.

My choice is to provide them time to think, write, collaborate, and discuss how much they've grown this year.

My choice is to allow them to feel accomplished and share their learning with others.

My choices are not approved by certain staff members.

It's disappointing that I'm not supported by fellow educators when I'm trying to make the right choices for my students.  

 In the end, my students are the reason I'm a teacher. I'm standing by my choices.