The school I work for will be out of session in 8 days. The kids are counting down, the teachers are counting down, there even is a countdown on the sign in sheet in the main office (it makes me smile each morning). Yet you ask, is there a countdown in my room? Do I speak in countdown numbers to my students? No. In the world of my classroom, I pretend school is the song that never ends, it goes on and on my friends.
Why?
Explosions. That’s why. Everything I know about life tells me that countdowns lead to explosions. A bomb being detonated. Fireworks at New Year’s Eve. Hysterics on American Idol.
Acme is far and away superior.
That’s not cool when translated into the classroom. I imagine brain explosions. Manage your students’ behavior and motivation very firmly in the final days of school. Think about the answers people give when describing what they would do if the world ended tomorrow. These answers are decidedly split into two factions- family time/praying and last minute pleasure seeking/general debauchery. Kids can sometimes look at the last couple days of school as the end of a large element of their lives. “I can’t get detention on the last day of school, so I can do whatev!” or “Homework doesn’t really matter now, school is out in two weeks!”
Whether you are teaching 7th graders (ahem!) or seniors about to graduate, try to look at those last days not as a futile end of days but as days in the school calendar just as important as a random Thursday in October. That being said, school is almost out for summer! Enjoy counting down those final days with a gleeful giddiness (in private)!
Totally unrelated awesome picture via Reddit.
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