The Final Hours
The end of the school year is
filled with students driving motorcycles down hallways, a barrage of water
balloons, book inventories and parents demanding that school remain meaningful
until the last day. How does a teacher face this insanity without resorting to
inappropriate means?
Unbelievable demands are placed on educators during the last days of
school. To survive everyone in the
school needs to work together. Put
down the bottle and relax. There
are solutions to the end of the year blues.
To facilitate the nonsense, teachers
need to work before school and after school to complete inventories and storage
of books and equipment. Dealing with both the behavior needs of disruptive,
agitated students and the requirements at the end of the year will drive any teacher
crazy. If teachers try to do both
simultaneously, they will not do either well. Furthermore, every teacher is going to need help. Teachers need to be able to
work together to find time-out places for students too full of anticipation to
control themselves in classrooms. This
is much more effective than putting Duct Tape on their mouths which will get
a teacher into trouble. Teachers need to
develop interactive lessons that require students to move to enable them to
concentrate during the final days of school. A good child is a tired child, or is that dog? Administrators need to design a
plethora of activities to redirect students’ inappropriate behavior to more
constructive modes. What about a
faculty assembly, a field trip or a field day on the lawn? Help the children
burn off that energy in positive ways. In all, the school needs to work as a team to survive
the last days of a school year.
Parents
often wait until grades for the year are already finalized to confront teachers
about an assignment their son/daughter missed ages ago. To avoid this, teachers need to be
vigilant during that final quarter to not only grade and record assignments in
a timely manner, but to call or email parents often throughout that quarter
about any lapses in their child’s academic work. There is nothing worse than being attacked by a parent the
last hour of the last day about an assignment or project due three weeks before
that the child failed to complete.
Yes, the teacher may have done everything he/she is required to do, but it
won’t make anyone less frustrated when that mother is screaming at the teacher. Please do not resort to the thoughts
that are flying through a teacher's frustrated mind:
“I put the grade on-line, maybe if you didn’t take your son/daughter on
a Caribbean Cruise during the last month of school, you would have had time to
check them.” Or even worse, “The only hope for your child is retroactive birth
control.” This is like
opening Pandora’s box. No one
wants to face that kind of heat.
To
curtail the hallway shenanigans, teachers need to stand in the hallways before
school, during class change and after schools. Students are far less likely to throw those water balloons
or ride their motorbike down the hall if they are being monitored. I know everyone is buried in make-up
assignments to correct, inventories and polishing those desks, but believe me
keeping the students from ripping down the building is more important. First, the make-up work isn’t
quality work. A student working
under duress pressured by an angry parent who forced him/her to complete a
month’s worth of work from seven classes in two late nights, does not create
quality work. Don’t spend more
time correcting this swill than the student spent creating it. Second, completing the inventory is
easier when there are not students or parents complaining. by saving the inventory for an early
morning or an after school activity, it will be more accurate and teachers will be
less stressed. Third, let the
little darlings wash their own desks.
They made the mess; they should clean it up. Fourth, administrators need to be vigilant about offering
early vacations to students who are unable to maintain a certain level of
decorum. Otherwise, it will be
pandemonium as students compete for the most mischievous behavior. I have seen it all: a student who lit
the school on fire, another lit a teacher on fire and one stacked picnic tables
to create his own Leaning Tower of Pisa.
Finally, the district administrators need to be more conscious of the
problems faced at schools in the final days. This is not a good time to resurface the parking lot of the
middle school making one hundred faculty and staff members park their cars on
the street while parents, school buses and confused children wander across wet
asphalt. Recess is not a good time
to deliver a semi-truck full of playground woodchips and uninstalling and
installing windows over the heads of high school students taking final
examinations could be ruinous to their concentration. The teachers, the school and
even the district have to work as a team to complete the last few days
successfully.
Most
importantly remember in a week or two teachers can lie in their hammock in the shade
of their walnut tree sipping an ice tea or a cocktail. They will have time to walk their dogs or go to a ball game. Relax. There might still be a student in the boys lavatory without his clothing or a couple locked in an amorous embrace in the dumpster behind the school, but when the teachers lock their doors, turn in their keys and drive away for the summer, they are free. The students will forget the stress the second that final
bell rings and “they are free at last.”
Teachers will also find their freedom.
If it is too late, there is always next year.