Preparing for a New School Year

                                            

The Fourth of July.  Flags. Parades. Barbecues.  And my mom’s voice in my head telling me, “The fun hasn't ended! You still have a lot of summer vacation to enjoy!!”  Growing up in Minnesota, my mom was right since school started after Labor Day.  But where I teach in Illinois, summer vacation ends when the school bell rings in mid-August.  So, for me, summer vacation is rapidly coming to a close.

Out comes my list of things to do before each school year begins. I organize it like this:

                         

I have taught kindergarten for 22 years but I still have lots of preparations!  This summer, I’ll be finding some of my old Beanie Babies and buying a few new ones to help me teach decoding strategies. Stretchy Snake will be a prop for helping kids to stre-etch out sounds! 

I want to affix cute The Little Engine That Could nameplates to the Read to Self book boxes. I always read this classic on "Blue Day" during the first week of school. The stickers may remind the kids to try their best to read to themselves each day.

I am eager to either find or create a much smaller set of math objectives from the Common Core.  I always post and share the lesson's objective on a sentence strip but think I may have too many.

     I can arrange objects to count them.

This summer will be my last summer vacation EVER because the 2017-2018 school year will be my last year of public school teaching.  After eight years as a special ed teacher and 23 years of teaching kindergarten, I will be retiring.  I’ve heard it said that retirement is “everlasting summer vacation.”  If that is true, I wonder how I’ll fill my days?  When the next July 4^th rolls around, what will I be planning?  I already know I WON’T stop teaching someone something.  I AM a teacher!

I’ve started this blog to share what has worked best for me in my long career in public education, to reflect on the final year of public school teaching, and to figure out how to continue my love of teaching in retirement.

What does your "To Do for School" list look like for the new school year?  What are you excited to prepare?