Reflections

Now that the school year is over, I thought I would jot down some thoughts that I have about the year, and then I can start thinking about summer fun! So here we go:

From a teaching standpoint, a pretty good year. This freshmen class was overall very good, and even though all my classes were over 20 students (usually 25-27), the fact that they were good kids really helped me to enjoy it (most of the time). We did have a new superintendent, however, and he caused problems for some colleagues, including Ben, so I can't say the year was without concerns.

Sam is now done with kindergarten. He had a great year, too, and made some good friends. Waiting for him to start school until he was almost 6 was definitely the right choice, and he has matured so much in the past year.

This was out last year of paying for childcare. The last two years have been easier, since we were only paying for half days, but now we are done for good. After 10 years!

No more Letter Bag! I am happy about this - doing it for two years started to be quite the chore to agree on what item we were going to put in the bag each Thursday night. I do think it was a good learning experience for the kids, but since Sam spent two years in Kinderpaws (one during preschool and one during kindergarten) it was overkill for us.

Maria had another awesome year, which I discussed in the last post. I am relieved to put off the start of middle school for another year since they are moving the 5th grade to the new elementary next year. Plus she gets to enjoy the brand new school for a little longer.

Ben had a better year due to the lack of any lunch or recess duty. He also served as a mentor for the new music teacher and had a student teacher in the fall. And got a surprise raise a couple of weeks ago - the superintendent changed his 20 extended days to 25 extended days, without any request from Ben. It still doesn't begin to cover the extra hours Ben puts in, but any raise is certainly nice.

All in all, another good year we can feel grateful about. And it marks the end of year #16 for both of us, which means we might be able to retire in 14 more. But we really have no idea if that will actually happen or not!