Living The Good Life

My time at Middleton Middle School is quickly drawing to a close. With only three days of the school year left, I am beginning to get quite nostalgic. Here are some of the people and memories that keep running through my head: * Rebecca getting her arm caught in the Coke machine outside of the building. The jaws of life had to help cut her out. * Gage asking me if I remembered where I was when Kurt Cobain died. Does he remember? * Ryan and Mike changing the settings on my laptop so that the start button said Mike , and the runner across the top said Ryan Rules . * Having Jace tell me, while he was in tears, that it was the worst day of his entire life because Wess stole his twinkie. Remember when that really was the worst thing that ever happened? * When Burkley and Jared tried to explain that they threw a stink bomb into my room because, and I quote, "But Mrs. Richert, you're the only teacher who can take a joke!" I didn't take it that well. * Having Tyler start cryi...

How do I always seem to forget, come September, that eighth graders are insane? In the last week (keep in mind today is only Tuesday) I have had to stop students from shocking themselves by putting the end of computer cords in their mouth while the other end was plugged in, some students tried to set the school on fire (for the second time), a boy had a video camera in a bathroom stall (I don't even want to know...) and there is so much PDA going on in the hallway next to my classroom, I find myself making as much noise as possible ("Oh! Here I come, walking out of my classroom!" stomp, stomp, stomp). Ahh....spring. The kids are definitely ready for the start of summer, the only problem is that we have about five weeks of school left. Poor souls, they don't really expect me to make them work those last few weeks. (Insert evil laugh here) This is usually the time of year when I am anticipating summer just as much as the kids. We are all usually counting down how...

The Christmas/New Year break flew by and I have found myself back in the trenches of the 8th grade classroom. I am surrounded by projects that I had assigned to be completed over the break (what was I thinking!!) and desperately need a grade break. We are starting the long winter stretch where school is concerned. The next two months are typically the hardest for me to get through. It is when all the optimism of the beginning of the year begins to wear off and the ol' "doubting that anything I'm doing is making a difference" thoughts creep into view. I struggle during this time because the year is officially half way over, and there is still so much I want to accomplish. I feel like I am running out of time and the kids will never have the skill set they need to move onto high school. In fact, I'm meeting with the high school English staff tomorrow, always an intimidating experience, to discuss how we can make the transition from middle school to high school a li...