Listening: It has been raining the past two weekends. The weather has been great on the weekdays, but it's practically monsoon season once Saturday arrives. Given that I'm trying to start a vegetable garden, the rain is a bit inconvenient. Today I finally gave up on waiting, put on some rain boots, and went and gardened in the mud. My raised plant beds are now all set up, and I'm anxious to see how successful I'll be with my first garden. Thank you, Pinterest, for inspiring yet another project that I may or may not have time for! :)
Loving: Wrapping up the end of the school year is always so hard, especially once we hit this stretch after standardized tests when the weather is fantastic and the schedule is constantly interrupted with end of year events. I'm loving that the end is finally in sight with only three more weeks to go! (My students are done on the Friday before Memorial Day; I have two post-planning days the following week.)
Thinking: This year has just whirred by me! I've absolutely loved this group of students, and we've accomplished so much this year. It's hard to believe that we're in that final stretch.
Wanting: My classroom is, for lack of a better description, a bit of a mess. I've stashed all sorts of things in cupboards and storage units, and I really need to declutter. I want it all to be very well organized and accessible when I return in July. (Yes, July...the flip-side of finishing before Memorial Day is that the students will report on August 1, which means teachers report in late July...) The fact that I'm moving toward a paperless set up is helping, but there's still a lot to organize.
Needing: My summer wardrobe is so blah, and I've gained a few pounds this year, which makes my need to go shopping more necessary and less appealing. If I can just get through these next few weeks, I think I'll be able to go through my closet and get a better handle on things.
Summer Bucket List: I need to finish making my transition to going paperless, which means I'll need to consolidate and reorganize some files and break out the scanner for some of my paper files. I can tell already that this is going to be worth it in the end. I've emptied out an entire filing cabinet in my classroom already, and that alone has created a ton of possible storage space that I never had before. It's glorious.
I have several blog posts in the works for the next few days -- I think my blog hiatus is over, but I did want to share a bit about what's been going on that's left me MIA lately.
1. We became a 1:1 iPad school. April 15th was the day that all of the 4th and 5th graders in my school received iPads, and it's been very exciting. I've changed up a lot of how I do things to accommodate the full-time access to iPads, and I'm really happy with the results. It has also meant that I've spent a lot of my time troubleshooting and exploring possibilities and coaching my colleagues as they try out the iPads with their students for the first time.
2. I got accepted into a doctoral program! Starting this fall, I'll be working on my EdD at University of Georgia in Educational Leadership. I don't particularly want to be a principal or anything like that, but I would like to do more in curriculum leadership and teacher professional development, so this is the next step. I'm really excited about the program, but I'm a bit terrified over the time commitment -- especially with a toddler and all that I'm already doing at work. If I don't do it now, though, I probably won't get around to it until the little one gets MUCH older, so here we go!
3. We did standardized testing. Is there anything more boring and unnecessarily stressful than administering those tests?! I know my students were well-prepared, and yet, I have nightmares about those $*(@ tests every year. They really wiped me out this year for some reason.
4. Lots of long term projects got wrapped up. Between writing committee reports and finishing assignments for my math endorsement, I've had very little free time. In fact, I'm already three episodes behind in this season of Mad Men, and usually very little can stand between me and Don Draper! Things seem to be calming down a bit, so I'm hopeful that I'll be able to get back into a good routine and back to blogging more regularly. I've missed the blogosphere a bunch, and I have so many blogs I need to visit and catch up on!
So that's where May finds me. I hope all of you are doing well, and happy Teacher Appreciation Week! (I WILL be participating in the TpT sale, btw!)
Have a great week!
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