I was at a wedding this weekend. I saw a lot of cousins there. A lot of my cousins are also teachers, which means the question most commonly passed around during the wedding reception small talk was "How many days of school are left?"
I always answered: Two fives and two fours, meaning two five-day weeks and two four-day weeks. The two fives get us up to Memorial Day weekend, and the two fours follow it. If you want to be technical about it, it's actually one day longer than that, but I'm only counting the eighteen student contact days. The last day of the school year for teachers is Friday, June 9, a teacher work day, or a day without students. Days like these are always happy cushions between wrapping up with the kids and moving on to the summer, even if they're usually busy with the tasks required to wrap up the final points of the school year.
But it's possible to have that day be a nice, low-stress affair as well. It just takes some pre-planning.
I've done this job long enough now to see the end of the year coming, and to know what things need to happen before my principal will give me the thumbs up on walking out the door to start my summer. We have a staff meeting in a couple of days, during which she will pass out a checklist of things we all need to be sure to do before leaving for the summer. I've seen this enough times I could probably recite most of it from memory. However, it's mostly incomplete. That list only shows the things the school needs me to do before I can leave. For me to feel completely prepared, I have my own separate list of things that need to be done. Given the choice, I'd rather walk out at the end of the year after taking time to organize my room then come back in the fall and have to work from the ground up to get started. Because of this, and because I don't want to be scrambling to do all of these things at the last minute, I'm starting to do things a little bit at a time.
To give you a quick window into what teachers need to do to prepare for summer vacation, here's a part of what that checklist looks like. Some of these things are from the school list, and some are from my personal list. Admittedly, my list can be a bit more ambitious and detailed than it is for many other teachers, or is even necessary. But I know what I have to do to get myself ready:
- clean out my email inbox, and sort through my saved mail to determine what still needs to be saved and what I can delete;
- sort through my computer files for the school year, to figure out what could still be useful next year and what can go, then back it all up on my district server folder;
- clean my computer screen, keyboard, and mouse; there are cleaning stations for this reason assembled throughout the school on that last day, with compressed air, cleaning solution and cotton balls
- disconnect all of my cords and check in any computer or Promethean peripherals I have to the media center;
- clean the Promethean board and any white board surfaces, then cover the Promethean board with butcher paper to keep it clean over the summer;
- INVENTORY: All of the fourth grade math materials, all of the fifth grade math materials, all of the fourth grade science materials, all of the fifth grade science materials, all of the student math reference books, all of the remaining consumable student math journals and science notebooks so the right number are ordered for the fall;
- clean out every drawer in my desk and file cabinet; organize the materials before I back them, determine what I can throw away and what needs to be shredded or returned to the office;
- dust and wipe down most, if not all, flat surfaces in my classroom;
- reassemble any card decks or game sets or math manipulatives that have been messed up during the year from student use (on a side note, I always get spell checked when I type "manipulatives," which is a common word in elementary education but must not be anywhere else);
- pack up my book collection;
- organize my closet so I can fit as much of my personal stuff in it as possible so it will be locked up over the summer;
- pack up all of the magnets I keep on my front white board;
- organize my pens, pencils, and markers, and figure out which are too messed up or dried out to make it worth keeping any more;
- pack up the plastic bags and sticky notes that didn't get used this year so we have them for next year;
- strip the bulletin boards bare;
- take down every poster and sign from the walls;
- update placement information cards for the 4th graders so we have a prayer of putting together good classes for when they go to fifth grade;
- make sure my curriculum binders are organized and assembled;
- peel student name labels off their classroom bins and hallway lockers, then clean their names off of their desks;
- turn in the 4th and 5th grade supply lists to be distributed to parents in the fall;
- assign grades to all third trimester report card indicators;
- enter all grades into the system;
- write and enter report card comments;
- pass out yearbooks when they arrive;
- bring in extra grocery bags from home so kids can pack up their stuff on locker clean out day, because SOMEONE is still going to have snow pants in their locker on June 8th;
- collect any student reference math books that have been checked out to families to keep at home for the school year;
- turn in any "necessary" data collection spreadsheets to the office
And that's just what I came up with off the top of my head.
At least I don't have to worry about cleaning out my personal bottle of salad dressing from the staff lounge refrigerator.
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