Happy Teacher Appreciation Week!

Today marks the end of teacher appreciation week! Some of my kids even said thank you and the PTO gave us gift baskets. For all my fellow teachers, Happy Teacher Appreciation week! I know you are appreciated even if you don't ever get told. My kids tell me all the time, but that only really started this year.

But kids will be kids and it IS May, so everyone is a little more squirrelly than usual. Not that they're bad per se, but that they're slightly very much less inclined to stay seated and focus on a reading passage. I've been asked 5 times by coworkers if it was a full moon since the 1st of May alone. Aside from the warm weather, we all know that the end is near. The end of school, that is, and so, somehow, we attempt to hasten it along by being disruptive and having much drama.

It helps that we didn't get a Spring Break this year, so everyone is extra tired.

So, blogging world, let me ask you a question. If you had a perfectly good shirt--one you can wear in public and not one of those ratty ones you use to bleach the toilet in--and you wore it to school one day, would you put staples in it? No? Well tell that to two of my most interesting students, who apparently during band class, stapled the bottom of their shirts with staples.

No, I don't know why.

Then, when one of them was done with their work at the end of the last class of the day, she asks me if she could stand by the trashcan and pick them out of her shirt. I, of course, said yes. She stood there and picked out all the staples and showed me the holes in the bottom of her shirt. I was all, "What did you think would happen?" She laughed. I'm pretty sure she didn't care. Of course, if I had bought her that shirt I think I would care just a tad. I expressed this view to her about her parents not liking this, but she said she got the shirt from her friend anyway... at which point I reminded her that her friend's parents probably wouldn't appreciate it either.

In other news, Prom is tomorrow and graduation is next week. For the first time, I have seniors in my classes, so they all have to take their finals Monday and Tuesday. I'm happy for them. Graduation always gives me a sense of nostalgia and burgeoning hope for the future. The end of a chapter has happened and the new one is fresh and without mistakes in it. For all we know, these kids are the next presidents and CEOs and farmers and librarians. They are the next stay-at-home moms and teachers to nurture the next generation. They are the next success stories, and we get to see it all from the beginning. It's exciting!

And knowing I had a part in this makes me feel very appreciated...or at least important... as a teacher.