The last few weeks of school are always an adventure.  They are filled with projects final grades, activities, and trying to get yourself and the students to push through until the end.  There have been some very funny videos and memes about it, and I especially loved these two: “Teaching in May like: 1 hour here is like seven hours on earth” and “The Last week of school is a walk in the park . . . Jurassic Park.”  Good times!

Truthfully, even though I feel like I am at the very end of my reserves for everything (and still haven’t gotten my voice back, by the way), it has also been a wonderful time.  I love these students of mine so very much, and I am so beyond proud of them and how much they have grown this year.  They will always have a piece of my heart, that is for sure.

Last week we finished up our month long research project on famous Texans.  I had a large list of people they could choose from, everyone from Beyonce to George W. Bush, to Stephen F. Austin.  After doing a week of research, they wrote a paper about their person, and then created a presentation, which they had to present to the class.  They had the option of dressing up for it, and other than a boy who dressed up like Lance Armstrong (workout shorts and a bike helmet), I only had one other student who dressed up, and she looked so awesome as Davy Crockett, that she even gave her presentation for one of the other classes as well.

After finishing off the last of the grading and other things for the week before the last week of school, I was physically and emotionally spent, and so when I realized that my amazing blackberry harvests were soon to be a thing of the past, I decided to use the last of my energy reserves to make some delicious things with them.  The first of which was blackberry ice cream – so good!!!

And then, because i wasn’t busy or worn out enough 😉, I made blackberry jam.  But seriously, it is so good!  

One of the craziest things about this last week of school was the fact that I have actually been seeing the sun rise – which never happens, even though I am still getting to school at the same time of 6:25 am every morning.  I love it, but is a tad disconcerting, making me feel like I am late 😂.

We have also blessedly had some  much needed rain lately, and even though it has meant a couple indoor recesses (perish the thought), it has made everything extra green.  My favorite is how all the Texas Sage plants are bursting with purple flowers – my favorite.

School this last week was full of all the things, besides what we had planned as a class and as a grade level.  One of those was the Las Lomas alumni walk where the graduating seniors who attended Las Lomas got to walk the hall  and be cheered on by all the kids.  It was so fun to see a few of the awesome youth from church who came through, including Bella, the older sister of one of my sweet students, Capri.

Between that and 5th grade graduation, there were some extra fun decorations up in the halls, and so I had to get a picture of my class in front of it.  Did I mention how much I love these kids, even when they drive me insane.  One of the things they did this week was to fill out a digital memory book, and they had to write down “Something my teacher always says is . . .”  They started sharing with each other what they wrote, and it all seemed to enter around me telling them to be quiet 🙄.  “Stop talking.” “Stop talking purple table.” “Be quiet.” “Turn off your voices.” “I’d like to read.” and so on and so forth.  They thought it was hilarious, and I told them that maybe they should just stop talking 😂.

Tuesday was our last field trip of the school year, and we had arranged to walk across and down the street to the Classen-Steubing Ranch Park with the amazing Mitchell’s Landing playground.  It was about a half mile to get to the playground from the school, and we had police officers there to stop traffic so that we could cross the road, which was perfect.  (On the way there, the kids didn’t mind the walking, but on the way back – after playing hard for 2 hours – they had changed their tune.  Oh well.)

Most of the kids chose to play on the playground the whole time, and of course, there were some boys that played soccer out on the fields for most of the time, but I spent all but about ten minutes taking those who wanted to come on nature hikes.  They were short little hikes, but the kids loved it, and when you are on the trails, it feels so separate from the city, that it is awesome. On one of the loops, we even saw a few deer.  And of course, I had to point out all the wildlife and foliage I noticed.  Good times!  

The only downside to the whole field trip was that it just happened to be insanely humid that day.  If not for that, the weather would have been perfect, as it was in the 70’s and low 80’s while we were there, since we were headed back back 10am.  The humidity meant that I was literally drenched with sweat – my clothes and my underwear.  It was so bacd that I messaged Derek and asked him to bring me new closthes to change into, because although I couldn’t shower, at least I was dry – ha ha!

That night I hosted book club.  I maybe shouldn’t have planned that for the night after a field trip, but oh well.  The biggest issue came because the AC downstairs stopped working, so not only was I freaking out about the heat in the house that I was about to fill with my book club, but how was I supposed to bake my blackberry peach cobbler???  Well, my wonderful friend, Farida, came to my rescue and let me use her oven to bake it.  What a blessing!!  And book club ended up turning out great and so much fun.

Wednesday was one of the end of the year activities. the MAP Goal Glow Party.  The kids who reached their goal got to have cookies, dance, and just have fun in glow lights for a party.  I wasn’t able to actually attend the party, as it was my turn to stay behind with the kids who didn’t earn it, and so I was super grateful for the fun picture that my friend, Natalie, sent me.  Good times!

Earlier that day, I had a little awards ceremony with my class.  I had special certificates that I made for each of my students, highlighting something amazing about them, whether it was fantastic growth, or being super kind or honest.  I also included any other awards they may have earned, like a reading award from meeting their reading goal, etc. They loved it.  Funnily enough, I spent almost all the rest of the day reading to my class from our novel, The Westing Game.  We had gotten behind when I lost my voice, and we had to finish it before the end of the school year.  It is a murder mystery – I couldn’t leave them hanging 😉.  At the end of the day, we finished cleaning out all of the belongings and stacked our desks and chairs to be ready for Thursday.

Thursday, all of my students brought pillows and blankets and then spread out around on the now open floor, and then I read to them from our book for 1 1/2 hours until we had finished our book.  It was awesome, and they all clapped.  Good times!  Then I showed them the movie, “Mary Poppins,” which I had discovered that 90% of the kids in my class had never seen.  That had to be remedied 😂.  Partway through the movie, we took a break outside for them to get to run around, but mostly so we could have a popsicle party.  I wanted to do something special for them, because although they didn’t meet the class multiplication goal (of 100% of students passing off their 1-12’s) to get a sundae party, they deserved something. Especially because they only missed the goal by two students.

The movie finished fifteen minutes before school got our, which was the perfect amount of time for one last impromptu dance party to our favorite songs.  It was a great day, and we spent it in a way that worked perfectly for the amount of attention span they had, and the amount of patience I had – ha ha! When I got home after the day was over and saw this meme, “Today’s number is Zero.  Zero children are listening to me today.” Which was totally true, except for when I was reading our novel. Good times 😂.

When I got home at the end of the day, after picking Arthur and his carpool up from the middle school, and then I crashed.  A school year’s worth of exhaustion hitting me.  Thank goodness Kevin is totally fine with picking up food on the days when I am done. 

One of my very parts of the last day of school, were the amazingly sweet and heartfelt cards and letters from some of my students.  Two of the girls in my class made this mini book and had all the students sign it, and as I read it, it totally made me cry.  It had all these sweet little details throughout it, including a list of all the novels we read during the year.  My favorite part was the the list “About Mrs. Brown: She doesn’t like coffee; She loves reading; She loves her garden; She loves having fun; She loves teaching; She loves her students.”  I mean, how sweet and wonderful ❤️🥹.

And then there were some more that truly touched my heart.  I teach because I love my students, and I love to share knowledge and see how much they grow. Or seeing the spark in their eyes when they learn something new.

Although the kids all had their last day of school on Thursday, I still had to come into work on Friday.  Luckily, I had been working all week to pack up and move the things I had to take care of to be able to get signed off for the summer, but I still had to finish a few things, including cataloging the rest of my books so that I could make sure I had all of them accounted for.  Because I needed a little help, I enlisted both Derek and Arthur, who helped me for about an hour before they walked back to the house.  It is always weird seeing an empty classroom, but luckily I am not changing classrooms next year, and so the walls aren’t totally empty.

We had one last staff meeting on Friday morning, and then Laura and I went out to breakfast with Brianna so that we could have a goodbye.  Sadly, she is moving to Corpus Christi, and so she won’t be teaching with us next year. After we finished up, I worked until about 2pm, and then was finally free for the summer.  It was a fabulous, sometimes very difficult and exhausting year.