{"id":7885,"date":"2023-06-25T23:09:53","date_gmt":"2023-06-26T06:09:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/educatoral.com\/wordpress\/?p=7885"},"modified":"2023-06-27T23:16:13","modified_gmt":"2023-06-28T06:16:13","slug":"2022-2023-school-year-exhausting-confusing-rewarding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/educatoral.com\/wordpress\/2023\/06\/25\/2022-2023-school-year-exhausting-confusing-rewarding\/","title":{"rendered":"2022-2023 School Year – Exhausting, Confusing, Rewarding"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"Selfie<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

After COVID it was nice to start the school year like almost normal. Kids were in full classes of 24 or 25 giving us 75 students (14 5th graders and 61 6th graders) in three classes and they were coming to school all day, every day. I was teaching only Science, another teacher taught ELA and Social Studies, and a third teacher taught Math making our three-person PLC team. After getting COVID last spring when I finally took my mask off (mandate was lifted) I spent most of this year wearing my masks indoors. This spring I took my mask off and kept it off all spring hoping I wouldn’t catch COVID and I am so grateful that I did not catch it again! I did get a bad, nasty cold this past winter though and that was not pleasant so even masking indoors around children was not enough. I’m not sure what I’ll do next year during the fall and winter. While I’d rather not mask indoors every day like I did this year, it is reassuring with all the viruses that went around this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even though it was a seemingly on the surface normal school year, something about this year, not just because some of us wore masks and most of us did not, was off and really different. I was happy to see kids being accepting and respectful of each other’s choices to mask or not mask but something else was off. We expected kids to be excited about being back in school full time, not for school but to be around each other<\/strong>, and with each other. Getting along and working together was high on my list of skills to give kids time to practice and boy did they need it. Peer to peer conflicts and arguments and yes, even fights, were plentiful. We noticed that even after teaching, modeling, practicing, and reviewing our rules, procedures, and routines kids were still not following them. November came and went, December came and went, winter break came and went, the new year came and we were still dealing with behaviors that pre-COVID would not have been so rampant by that time of year. We were still modeling, reviewing, and practicing what we meant by be kind and be respectful to each other and your teachers. Rules and procedures and routines needed a lot of review.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"A<\/a>
A coho salmon that we caught in our trap and identified before returning to the creek unharmed.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Here is a Wakelet collection<\/a> (shown below) that I created for my students at the end of this year to show them all the wonderful activities we did this year and to remind them of the standards we had the opportunity to learn. I told them, “I don’t want you telling your 7th grade Science teacher that you didn’t learn anything next year<\/em>.” I was only partly joking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n