Teacher Diaries: It's Officially Summer

Thursday, July 09, 2015 Ivy O 0 Comments

Cheers to summer! My celebratory dinner of sushi and Somersby, the best way to welcome the first official day of summer break, if you ask me.

First off, I would like to apologise for the long pause since my last post. Once summer officially began for me, I was quickly packing for my summer stateside with my husband and his family. Unfortunately, where he lives, the internet service is not very good, thus limiting my ability to upload photos as well as write new posts. Therefore, please bear with me this summer as I will not be posting as often as I was able to in the past.

Secondly, can I just say how happy I am to say goodbye to my second year of teaching! Although it was not nearly as tough as my first year as a teacher which had me instructing three different grades (Grades 5, 7 and 8) but also gave me some of the toughest and behavioural students I have ever met, it certainly was not a cake walk. Since I had never taught Grade 3 before, I did find myself creating many new lessons/units, and struggling with the preparation for Ontario's EQAO standardised testing. Despite the usual challenges of being a teacher (cramming 12 months of work into only 10 months, the many late nights, some of them all-nighters, marking, planning, and dealing with the dreaded report cards, not to mention teaching valuable life lessons of not bullying, sharing, etc), what I will miss most are the sweet students that I had the pleasure of meeting this year.

In addition to saying goodbye to some of the most intelligent, caring, and talented students, I said goodbye to my portable classroom. The latter goodbye, I was much happier about for obvious reasons. It meant:

1. No more bundling up in winter gear only to have to remove them as soon as I got into the school in order to use the bathroom.

2. No more hot, muggy and suffocating days where everyone is sweating from just merely sitting and breathing in unbearable heat.

3. No more sending children inside the school with my access pass so that they can use the bathroom (I do not even want to know how many germs are on that thing).

4. No more dirty, dusty, muddy floors from the children's outdoor boots being inside the classroom because having a classroom in the school finally means access to a hallway where their outdoor shoes can stay.

I have so much to look forward to in September, but until then, I will enjoy the summer months that I have off before I begin the cycle of very tiring and energy-consuming but rewarding days in the end when I know that I have made somewhat of a difference in my students' lives.