May

May is the most challenging time of year for me as a teacher.  All the little behaviors that were once just mildly annoying seem to be magnified to nearly intolerable especially after teaching the same kiddos for K-4 and K-5.  This combined with the stress of end of the year assessment, report cards and the pile of end of the year paperwork nearly sends me over the edge. I always wonder if it's me, am I easing up too much unconsciously because I know the year is almost over?  Maybe it's a little bit of everything.  Me, my students getting sick of each other (and me, lets get real), and the weather getting warmer the idea of summer planting itself in all of our brains.

I make sure to put my favorite unit in May, just as a little incentive for me to stay focused. Insects, we are learning about those industrious little bugs that are beautiful, odd, and fascinating. Not unlike my students themselves.

May is also the time when I see the biggest jump in writing with my students, we have been working hard all year at putting the stories we tell down on paper, in May suddenly things start to click. More abstract thoughts are appearing in my students, since most of them have turned 6.  They are able to articulate ideas and are proud to share their ideas with their peers.

So here we are with one month, 20 days of school left. I am exhausted. I am frustrated. I am nostalgic. I am proud. When I am exhausted I think, how can I make our last few days better, richer, memorable and engaging?  In my deepest moments of frustration I remind myself that THIS IS ALL WE HAVE, one more month.  We will never all be together in K-5 again, how do we want to remember each other? (I certainly don't want to be remembered for yelling at them in my crazy teacher voice for the entire last month of school). Today I was nostalgic, so I  looked back through my pictures on my computer and found the picture I took of each one of them on their first day of K-4 and all I could think was "WHAT BABIES!"  They were babies.  Now they are sophisticated, self sufficient, problems solvers who know how to do school. I was proud today after talking to an aide today about one of my students comforting another that was hurt and she said, "Your kids are always like that, they really know how to take care of each other."  This is my biggest goal with every class, to instill the idea that we should and can take care of each other.

May is hard, but soon it will be June and they will all move on to first grade.  Next year I will get a new set of students who I will likely have for two years.  I have a sneaking suspicion that I will be feeling all of these things again in two years.

Here are some of the lovely things I have heard over the past week that make May a little easier.

"Be like an ant and work together."

"An insect has three parts, a head, a LORAX, and an abdomen."

"Ants and bees both have queens who lay eggs but no kings!?"  (knowing smiles and nods from all the girls)

"Hey Ms. Savage, what's a knuckle sandwich?"

One of my insect loving students designing his own bee costume.