Summer

Today was the second to last day of the school year. The temperatures have risen and the room temps are in the upper 80's to low 90's. This makes things a little bit tough, but this year we were lucky to have only one week of heat. We aren't equipped with AC here, but would realy only need it for a couple of weeks at the start, and usually a couple at the end. To me, even though I'm uncomfortable, it's not worth the expense to have. I won't put it in my house either. But I'm getting off track.
Tomorrow we will celebrate the moving on of our oldest middle school students and send them to the high school. For the 8th graders, it's good half day of school. It's low stress, awards cermony, Medieval Faire video, followed by yearbook signing in the gym. During this time we generally have some tunes and this year will have my young virtuosos entertaining with their guitar wizardry. It should be a good final day.
My room is nearly bare. It's gnerally full of positive sayings and encouraging words, but due to the cleaning procedures, must come down each year. What a dull drab and uninviting place it turns into. I'll be working in there throughout much of the summer. My first project is to take out everything from my cabinets, storage closet, corners, shelves, desk and filing cabinets to see what I have. SOme of the stuff has been unopened since I moved in. Other things were moved from from my AE building in boxes that have yet to see the light of day. I intend to get things organized first this year( which has been on my to-do list since my first year). I just have too much stuff and need to get all of my units together in one place. Right now I have rocks, maps and space mixed together. I think this will make my life better and make my room look a little less chaotic...which was one of my principal's suggestions at my end of the year interview.
The organization will followed by starting my lesson plans and timings for the following year. This should be simplified by new organization(I hope).
During this time, I'll still be taking classes and also serving on jury duty. Luckily, they were flexible enough to change my dates of service so I can visit with my family, which will be traveling in for a week. This doesn't happen too often, so I'd really have been upset to be sittting on a jury during that time. I'm 30 miles from the court house which doesn't help, but I guess it's something I have to do. Just a week of summer when other things are less important. "The price of democracy", I'm told. With my history of working with the rougher end of the area's population, I just hope that I don't know too many of the accused :).