A Climactic End to a Successful Year

Instead of clawing the walls anticipating sending the students home on the last day, instead of a call to good riddance and let freedom ring, this year ended with hard work until the very last minute of the last day of school. I will miss my hard-working dedicated students.

The year handed me a mixed bags of highs, lows and middle of the road emotions. The overarching theme has been hard work = success and the harder you work the bigger your brain will be. This sort of mantra often led me to hoot and holler, jump on desks, and massage the head tops of my students. Sometimes I would ask them if there head hurt because it looked as if their brain had gotten so big that it was trying to escape from their skull. I promised my students that we would do great things this year. I strove to be a model of dedication and productivity for my students. For the last few weeks after testing while many classes were watching movies and playing games we were building bridges and producing art. Beyond good test scores, I believe my students have proof that education has relevance outside the classroom and that they have the ability to accomplish great things. The pictures below are proof positive that the students have done awesome work. It has been a fantastic two years, and the experience leaves and indelible footprint upon the trajectory of my life.

Students constructing model bridges tied to the measurement and geometry benchmarks.

This kid's brain is huge. That is the result of hard work.

Mosaics used to reinforce area, perimeter, and fractions.

Art plus math equals AWESOME!

The mural was designed by the student on the left who won the school-wide drawing contest. Art club's final project was to paint the mural in the auditorium ... a testament to creativity and dedication.