Graduation

These past few weeks have simply been just taking one day at a time and getting through one thing before I move on to the next. I never realized how busy High School Graduation time could be nor how emotional it would be. :( Kirk-our son and oldest child will graduate high school on Sunday. It has been a blink of an eye since his birth until now. He has taught me a lot about life in his 18 years of life. He has always had a gentle spirit and a heart for Jesus Christ. He spoke Sunday at church for our Senior Sunday program and delivered the message. He could of simply talked about his memories but instead he shared how the pastors-we belong to a Methodist church so he has had 6 pastors from birth until now :) -and the people in the congregation had shaped his life and what each pastor (all very different) taught him about the Christian walk of faith. I am thankful that the Lord chose Marty and myself to be his parents. It was a beautiful service and such a blessing to see the young people carry out all components of the service. Prior to that service, we had a UMYF Progressive dinner two weeks ago where we roasted our seniors, Baccalaureate was on Sunday night, a dessert get together at our school for the teachers whose children were graduating today, next will be Graduation Sunday afternoon and then a meal here after Graduation for family and friends. :) 

School lets out Wednesday, May 22nd. I can not believe this year is winding down. I have really had a wonderful year with my class! They have been such a joy to work with and watch them grow through the year. I hope I don't start crying on Wednesday on their last day!  Once again, I have been blessed to make new friends with their parents through the year. Success for the child could not happen and would not happen without the parents help throughout the year. I am so blessed that this year I have had an exceptional group of parents and grandparents to work with!

I am always looking for new ways to teach and new things to help my students learn. Every day I go home exhausted and I always think of things I could of done but I can always say I did the best I could. As long as the students can say the same, then that's all that we can ask or hope for from them and from ourselves. Data is just a number but if it can help me be a better teacher then let it. It's been a tough year adapting to common core while still juggling RTI, AimsWeb, Discovery, and everything else we juggle but I can see how all of it together has helped my students this year and it has helped me evaluate myself as a teacher and areas that I need to improve. 

My goal when I started this blog was to give an idea each time I made a post and I've failed to do that the last few times so I will try to do better. My idea today would just simply be to smile and greet each child each day when they come in the room and remind them how special they are to you! :)