8 days, 8 stressful days

I nearly forgot it was Tuesday, Slice of Life day! The reason - I'm obsessed with all the things I need to finish in these last eight days of the school year. Why is it always like this?

The end of the year usually catches me completely by surprise. "There's three days left?! But I didn't finish this, I didn't try that new idea, we never got to..." This year I posted a weekly countdown on the whiteboard. I started this because in 4th grade reading we do self-selected reading, but students are asked to aim for 25 books, writing a brief literary response on each. My class this year was pretty laid back about turning in things. I knew we would get to the end of the year and some of them would be trying to read 15 books in two weeks. Or less. So I posted how many weeks were left. It turned out to be very helpful for me, too. It reminded me to plan ahead so we could finish all our projects, and hopefully our last read-aloud book, too.

But now, in these last two weeks, I am endlessly grading or commenting on student work, mostly written work. There are 15 research reports, 15 sets of literary responses, 15 sets of pages for a social studies book project. Plus the end of the year tests we need to give. I need to turn in report card comments by June 1. We are doing digital portfolios for the first time and that needs to be done by June 21, though if you want feedback, earlier.

In addition, my daughter had three (!) master's papers due and she asked me to proofread and give advice on them all. I did that over the weekend, and I was happy to do it. It gave me a chance to see how much she has grown as a writer, researcher, and thinker, and I felt a lot of joy, seeing how far she has come. But then I didn't work on report card comments or my portfolio.

Yes, I will get it all done. I will have no life for the next little stretch of time, but then it will be summer! A literacy retreat, a family trip to Minnesota, and later a vacation in Los Angeles. Ahhh. I'll get there, I will.