The End of the School Year is Finally Here!! (A Lesson in Being Present in the Moment)

The 2017-2018 school year has come to an end for me. This one went by REALLY fast. (In fact, each year seems to go faster than the last. I'm not sure how I feel about it.) The last month of school has been a frenzy of grading the last projects and assessments of the year, attending school events, keeping stir-crazy kids under control, and worrying about how everything is going to get done.

There is a sense of urgency to the end of the year that's different from any other time of the year. So many work items come due at once. The last report card is given out on the last day of school, so all work from the quarter has to be graded and recorded by a deadline. (And in Catholic primary school, 8th graders get out three weeks earlier than everyone else so the urgency starts with them and goes on until the end of the year.) I have to complete a goal progress summary at the end of the year, which means time spent designing assessments for the students on my chosen goal, giving the assessments, grading them, recording and analyzing the data, and writing up a report on it. As a specials teacher, I only see the students once a week, so the time to complete various projects and assessments is very limited. Unlike other times of the year, if a student is absent or has a major problem with the project, I don't have the luxury of putting off helping them finish until a more convenient time. It has to be done now or it won't get done at all. This means hurrying students through making up previous work and doing current work within the same class period, shortening their fun game time, or calling them into the lab during study hall (for the middle schoolers). On top of just getting the kids' work done, I also have to disassemble everything in my classroom so maintenance can clean it thoroughly over the summer - empty out my desk, take all the posters off the walls, cover the bulletin boards, etc.

And the kids themselves are antsy to be done with school and prone to misbehavior. The best way to handle this problem in computer class is to keep them as busy as possible with interesting and challenging projects. The rationale is to make them work really hard and capture their interest so they don't have time or desire to misbehave. It usually works pretty well, along with dangling a carrot of getting a "Reward Day" of computer games and fun videos in the last class of the year if they get the work done and behave themselves. Lessons have to be carefully structured and strategized to avoid opportunities for misbehavior and make sure all students get the help and time they need to finish the last bits of work. It's a delicate balancing act.

I feel like I spend the last 4-6 weeks of school every year pushing through all this work, anxiously and impatiently waiting for the year to finally be over and the madness to end. The constant work of grading and recording grades, along with the high level strategic thinking needed to plan and teach lessons is exhausting. I remind myself that this intense workload won't last forever. I just need to push hard for a couple more weeks and it'll all be over, I'll get two glorious months of relaxing summer before I have to deal with this again. Thinking about the light at the end of the tunnel makes it much easier.

However, I realized this spring as I entered the final work crunch of the school year, that this "push through and get it done because it'll be over soon" attitude is one I take toward many situations in life. Back in the winter, when competitive color guard was stressing me out, I kept thinking, "Just a few more weeks of this and guard season will be over and I'll have one less thing on my plate." Right now as wedding planning kicks into high gear I find myself thinking, "I can't wait until the wedding is over so I don't have to deal with the craziness of planning anymore." I get anxious for stressful seasons of life to end so the current annoying workload can go away and life can return to something that resembles "normal." (Although usually another stressful season appears shortly after the previous one ends. I really should be used to that by now.)

In my prayer journal this last month or so, I wrote a lot of entries about how stressed I was and how I needed God's help to push through the last work of the school year. But I also found myself praying for peace and the strength to not think of this time as "pushing through." Instead, I wanted God to help me relax and be present in the stressful moments and find joy in the work I was doing. (This was definitely God's idea, not mine. He wanted to give me this peace, so he urged me to pray for it.)

So I tried this new attitude as best I could in the last weeks of school. Some days I did okay, and other days I resorted to my usual attitude of push through and get it over with. But I did find some special, God-given moments in the last weeks of school as I tried to be present amidst my stress. As I graded students' projects, I felt proud and impressed by the quality of many of them. I could see that so many students really put effort into the work and had truly learned the concepts I taught. Yay! (My 8th graders' final projects were especially good. They created a presentation using Google Slides, Prezi, or video in WeVideo advertising the school. The students' love for the school and their ability to design something beautiful was very evident.)

I watched 7th graders dig in to creating games using Code.org's Play Lab program and saw focus from them I hadn't seen in weeks. 3rd graders did a smaller scale game creation activity and got so excited about it they were sad when class was over and they had to stop working. I saw 4th and 5th graders put extra effort into their graphic design for research projects on biographies and countries of the world. During the last class of the year, 6th graders created JavaScript code drawings in Khan Academy showing their summer vacation plans and made some amazing, colorful pictures in just 15-20 minutes! Kindergarteners hugged me and told me they would miss me over the summer. And I loved seeing 1st and 2nd graders giggle at the funny hijinks in the Magic School Bus episode where the class mis-programs a computer and causes chaos at their school (one of my favorite episodes of this show in my own childhood).

There is joy to be found in stressful seasons, if you slow down, be present, and look for it. Now I need to remember to take the same attitude toward wedding planning in the next two months before my August 4 wedding. Please pray for me!