Finals are Finally here

Graduation was on Sunday and it was really nice! I was asked to be a Class Marshal along with another colleague and it was quite an honor to be asked. It was a really hot day in the gym, but the ceremony was only about an hour and a half. It was nice to see the seniors one more time before they graduated. This year I am not a Senior Advisor, but those "lucky" Senior Advisors got to spend all night with their Advisees at Project Graduation. It was a well kept secret, but I know they went to a High Ropes Course facility (Monkey C Monkey Do), and a place for Dinner and dancing as well as a boat cruise before coming back to school around 5 am. We did something very similar last year when I was a Senior Advisor. Because they were up all night, those Advisors get to stay home and sleep. The rest of us had our annual Advisee Day Out on Monday. I have 9th graders this year and so we went to the Big Adventure. Here we had access to Mini-Golf, Rock Climbing, Laser Tag, and an arcade. We had a nice Barbecue for lunch. the weather was very nice, just a perfect day for us.

Tuesday was our final regular class day of the year. With the seniors gone, the halls were much quieter. Students spent the day putting last minute touches on their Finals and emailing things to me they might need for their Finals. They had to turn in their iPads for the Summer, so sending me files they may need for the presentations was very important.

We had our final Learning Leader meeting of the year on Thursday. Most of the Team is going to meet with a facilitator for a 3 day retreat the last week of the month. I won't be there because I will be at the NEH Landmark of American History Institute on the Gold Rush in California. The next time after the retreat that we meet will be 8/20 and 21 during the day at school to get ready to start the new school year.

(The red on the left is where we will be in California, there is a close up on the right)

Finals began on Wednesday. Each day students have 2 of their classes in the morning and are dismissed at 11:30. Teacher use the afternoon to grade Final assessments. One of the down sides when you are a Senior Advisor, is that you lose one of these afternoons to meet your incoming 9th grade Advisee group. that was me last year, so I had plenty of time this year to grade assessments.

(presentation similar to how my students presented)

Finals continued in the same fashion Thursday and Friday. This leaves me with one more Final on Monday. Because I have some classes of Seniors and an online class through VHS, I really only had the U.S. History Finals left this week. Students in those classes were role-playing as if they supported a new Civil Rights Act for Native Americans. They had to present evidence and support claims to show why they supported the new Civil Rights Act. Then they had the chance to role play the Senate and come up with arguments to refute the claims. Its always a very interesting debate and discussion and many questions rise for students. We found ourselves delving into a sports mascot discussion outside of the presentations. During the NBA Finals, this commercial had aired just the night before our class:


I also shared this clip from a CNN story from a few years ago:
As a result, students were very much intrigued to continue discussing race and it's place in America today. Great stuff! It helps that we had been watching a documentary made with cooperation form the Maine Native American tribes called "Invisible" that made many claims about white privilege and racism today. It's a nice way to finish up the year!

Next week is my favorite school week of the year, with Thanksgiving week coming in second place. That is the LAST week of school. This year, it happens to be only 2 days long (though I will be coming to school on Wednesday to make sure my room is picked up and in summer mode). This year the last week is a little crazy because I will be leaving the following Saturday with a colleague for California, but its nice to get that over with early in the summer break! As an aside, the weather this week has been cool, cloudy, and a little wet. This is nice, because otherwise it would be almost unbearable for the students if it was hot since we have no air conditioning in the classrooms. Perhaps next week will be different?