Last Week of School Shennanigans

The last week of school should be a nice downhill slide.  But--when you teach 5th grade and have to put on a big Moving On ceremony and celebration (including lunch for all 5th graders) it's a lot.  You have to decorate, write a speech, pronounce all the kids' names correctly as you hand over their certificates, etc.  But it's super fun.  I do love event planning.  So of course I did the bulk of it.  (Another teacher did the programs, invite and certificates.  I basically managed the rest with the help of some great parent volunteers.).  Anyway, the stress and physical toll was heightened by another Totally Trish project.  I decided to take on 2 storage closets that were overflowing with old crap. 

I thought I'd use high school volunteers--and Sarah and her friends got it started.  But then I used my students (when 1/2 my class was on a patrol celebration field trip) to finish.  We emptied out enough books to fill a recycling dumpster.  We tossed materials that were from before I graduated high school.  One of my students asked if it was a 5th grade tradition to have them do some clean out.  I said, "if we are purging stuff from 1993, what do you think?"  Haha. 

It was exhausting (and a bunch of the possible "keeper" stuff had to be moved twice because we put it in a spare room that someone decided they wanted to move into.) But oh, so satisfying.  One student said it was his favorite day all year.  Not sure what that says about my teaching.  Haha.  Anyway, we'll be glad for this space to organize things. 

 We had a day off during the last week.  

Ben used it to go hang with Jed & co.

I used it to decorate for Moving On and get a mammogram (clean, yay!) and new glasses prescription.