09 school is year done. I'm sitting in bed and it's past 9:08am. This is beautiful and it's exactly what I need. Students and teachers both were getting exhausted. I could feel everyone's minds teetering at the edge of our individual thresholds by beginning of last week. Some students' frustrations exploded from time to time and I practically had to rub their backs and calm them down with gentle lullabies while sliding global history document based questions underneath their pens. It's a stressful time of the year for many of our students as Christmas and New Years often surfaces bad memories or articulates their poverty.
I asked a few days ago, "Who's looking forward to the holidays?" and got nothing. I somewhat saved that dead end conversation with a "Can we at least agree that we're looking forward to not having school?" to which I received a few positive yays and woohoos. Given all this, I was determined to end this year on a positive and hopeful note. I wanted to make sure I spoke words life to them before sending them home. So I pulled out my soapbox from underneath my desk, stepped up onto it, and filled up our 52 minute class periods with inspirational verbiage. Just kidding. I threw them a party. We ordered pizza, I made some Korean dumplings which all busted open and fell apart, and students brought in drinks and some good 'ol Dominican dishes. One of the students also brought some weird dancing game where you have to imitate a digital dance instructor on the screen.
It was a blast. They loved it. And just before they left for home I told them how I sincerely love and care for them even though I may get frustrated at times. I told them how much I've enjoyed getting to know them thus far and that I was really looking forward to torturing them more next year. They love that stuff. It was a good ending to the year. Bring it on 2010!
