To a Brilliant and First-Class School Year

We have reached the end of the school year!  Our grand finale came much more quickly than I anticipated!  Despite my super excited face in the picture above, I was actually a little sad for this year to be over already.  I have really enjoyed my group of students this year.  Still, summer is here!  I am greatly looking forward to warm days spent with my own kids reading and riding bikes and exploring and making a million crafts and eating s'mores by the fire pit.

The last day of school is always chaotic.  I feel like I have so many things I want to do, and then I turn around and it's dismissal time already!  This year, I had a memory activity for the students to work on that ended up taking up most of our morning.  I have seen ideas for making memory books for the school year on Pinterest and Teachers Pay Teachers; so I figured I could take the general idea and make some simple books for the kids.  To make the books, I used a sharpie and blank paper to make the following pages: A Letter from Your Teacher, About Me This Year, About My Typical School Day, My Funniest Memory, My Friends (an autograph page), Best Memory of the Year, Best Things I Learned This Year, About My Teacher, and Anything Else I Want to Remember.  I made copies of the pages for all the students, punched three holes in each page, and made brightly colored card stock covers for each memory book.  I tied the pages together with white ribbon and finished preparing the books by writing a personal letter to each student on the first page.  I wrote to them about things I would remember about them, their accomplishments that year, how proud I was of them, and encouragement and advice for the upcoming summer and next school year.

My students had a great time using my special pens to sign each other's books and write down funny or memorable things about the school year.  We passed our books around while we ate snacks that the kids had brought in. Then I gave the students a special gift.  Each year, I make something for my students that is frog-themed so that they can always remember their year with Mrs. Frogster.  Last year, I painted these little plaques for my students:

This year, I decided to put my crochet skills to work and made adorable colorful plush froggies for the students.  This was an ambitious project, as I ended up making 11 heads/bodies, 22 front legs, 22 back legs, and 88 tiny toes.  Then I had to sew them all together with pipe cleaners inserted so that the legs would be poseable.    Let's just say I spent some very late nights those last couple of weeks of school wearing my fingers out to make these little guys. But look at the result:

So cute!  It was fun to see my students standing in line at dismissal with little frogs poking their heads out of sweatshirts and back packs.  Some of my students deigned to give me a hug before they left. (haha)  

I almost forgot to mention it - and how could I forget to mention it?!?!  The staff surprised us with a video that morning in which they had interviewed our students about us.  The kids said the sweetest things about their teachers.  My students had little insights and comments that went deeper than "She's a good teacher."  It warmed my heart and perhaps caused a few tears to fall. ;)  Our administrator even gave us a copy of the video as a keepsake to remind us that we are valued and needed!  

In another post, I will reflect on the past year as I ask myself the following questions:  What worked this year?  What didn't work?  How could I have helped my students more?  How could I teach my subjects differently to reach each student?  What were the best things about this past year?  What were the worst?  Did I focus on character education as much as I did academics?  How was my communication with parents and with other teachers?  I strive to excel and be a better teacher every year than I was the year before.  That can only happen when I carefully evaluate my actions and look for areas to improve.

So, farewell school year 2017-2018!  You were a first-class year, and I shall miss you!  On to summer... and ice cream...