The End of an Era

Yesterday was the last day of the school year for me. I am convinced that summer vacation is more for the teachers than for the students. Each year as school gets out for the summer, I am super excited for the break and the time away from school. I usually have all of my checkout sheet finished within an hour of the students leaving and I get on my way to my own summer vacation. However, it was a very different situation yesterday as the students left. It was much more difficult to be excited about summer vacation this year; allow me to explain my feelings.


Over the past few months, our school board has made some very tough decisions. Everything they have decided hasn't always been supported by the community or the staff members, but the board honestly believes they are doing what is best. They have decided to eliminate the middle school (where I work) and move the 6th grade back into the elementary school and move the 7th and 8th grade up into the high school building. For those of you that don't know, the middle school campus is not an actual school building but rather four modular trailers set up in a circle. We (students and staff) know that our campus isn't the best but we still love it. It is our sanctuary and the place where the transition from elementary school and high school can take place. The middle school age is such an important age as students are going through many changes. Anyway, so the middle school campus will not longer be part of the school district. Another decision that was made by the board is to eliminate the four day school week for the middle/high school and move them back to a five day school week. Both of these big changes will begin next year for the 2011-2012 school year.


Now back to yesterday. As the students left I felt like a chapter of my life was closing. I have been working at the middle school for the past four years. It has been a very unique work environment. One of the greatest strengths of the middle school is the staff that I have been working with for the past few years. We are all seriously really good friends. We have such a strong bond and it makes it easy to collaborate and be on the same page. We enjoy being with each other and often have get togethers outside of school hours. It was sad because due to the changes, one staff member has found a new job and all the rest of us are not sure what is going to happen. We have not been offered contracts yet because the board and administration have not figured out how many teachers are really needed. We have been told that most of us will probably we offered contracts but we aren't sure where we will be teaching. The team is being broken apart. We are hoping to all move to the high school and be able to still teach the 7th and 8th graders. However, we may not get that opportunity as many of us will probably be given assignments that are not within our certified positions. It has been mentioned that they want to offer more electives and so most of us will be stuck with classes we have never taught and may not know much about. We'll be teaching both middle school and high school classes.


It was also hard to pack up my room because it has been my classroom my whole teaching career. I will be moving away from my home, my sanctuary. It was a really odd feeling. I didn't want the day to end. I didn't want to walk away from the place that I have grown to love. However, I did have to leave. I did have to get on with my summer vacation. Now I am just waiting to see which classroom will be mine within the high school building and what my teaching assignment will be. I will be starting a new adventure, but before I embrace it fully, I am going to spend a few weeks of the summer living in the many great memories I have made at that Dam middle school!

Fishing

The weather in St. George has been so warm and sunny that past couple of weeks. One evening Mahonri and I decided to take advantage of the nice weather. We tried going fishing Easter weekend but we didn't have any luck because it was crowded. The next Thursday evening, we were able to find time to get out and went fishing at Baker Reservoir. It is a beautiful res. surrounded by trees. There isn't much room to fish from the shore because of all the trees but luckily, we were the only ones there that evening. We were able to fish from one of the only spots shore fishing is possible. Here is a picture of where the res. flows over into a stream. It's a neat looking place.

It was a pretty slow fishing night. We did manage to catch one fish, a rainbow trout. We released the fish back into the water because neither of us enjoy eating fish. We are looking forward to summer when we will have more time to fish and hopefully camp.

I only have 2 weeks of school left this school year. Mahonri has 2 weeks off of school (although he'll be spending them at his annual training for guard) and then he'll be taking classes this summer semester. We are still waiting to find out about next year and the jobs in Beaver Dam.