OK, so here is the deal...

I got busted on a teacher review earlier in the year for using that phrase too often in front of my classes.  Evidently it is not OK to make deals with the students.  I am just supposed to lay it out for them and they are supposed to learn.

Like my students, I sat through the lecture on my technique and then returned to the classroom to make more deals but no real changes...


It is officially summer.  I have no keys to any public school classrooms and I like it that way.  I have very little work related that I need to do between now and August 1.  Awesome!  The kids and I are leaving in about 5 days on our epic road trip to St Louis and points East.  We will be gone for at least a week, running the roads in the south and central United States.  I bet we find some awesome adventures along the way.

In work related news:  I am officially finished with my tenure as a math teacher.  But I will always have the fond, happy memories.  When the new school year starts I will be back on my same campus.  Neither The Boss Lady nor I ended up taking a job at the new school.  My new class will be much different.  I was responsible for 30 7th grade students last school year as their Tracking Teacher. Supposedly I helped them keep up with assignments and communicated with their parents frequently about individual Special Education needs. I was also responsible for 25 math students in my drop-level math classes.  THEN, I saw about 75 more students in grade-level math classes.

Now I am not great at math, but that seems to add up to about 130 kids a day I was supposed to keep tabs on.  Next year I will have less than 10!  And THAT is math that I agree with.

Of course, there is a downside.  These 10 students (maybe as few as 5) come with lots of medical issues and LOADS of paperwork.  I keep thinking that no matter how much paperwork 5 students can generate, there is no way that it could be more than 130 can cause.  I am also afraid that I am about to be slapped right upside the head with a reality check!

The biggest change of all is that I will need to bust out my managing skillz again.  The new classroom comes with a staff of 4 or 5 that I have to keep corralled.  That will be the biggest job.

So there you have it.  The final installment on the 2011-2012 school year.  Forever to be known as The Year of Mikey Math.

Now let us never speak of it again.