End of the Year

I cannot really explain just how excited I am for the school year to end, but it is rather bitter-sweet, I must admit. As you can probably guess, I am ready to leave Morgan and all of the bullshit behind and I am ready for my vacation back in the states and I am excited to start a new adventure at another school, but I am so sad about leaving my children. I mean, that is the life of a teacher… you spend an entire year growing to love a handful of children, and at the end of the year, they grow up and move on. If you are lucky, some children stay a couple years in your school so you get to see them grow throughout several years, but eventually, they always grow up.
My kids and I have been talking about kindergarten a lot because all but one will be moving to kindergarten next year. I have one child that is moving to Germany at the end of this year, and I have a handful of kids that are going to kindergarten at other schools, but the majority of kids are staying at MRA for their last year. When we were talking about them getting a new teacher for kindergarten, they all protested saying that they did not want a new teacher, but they wanted to stay with me in my class. It brought a little tear to my eye. I have grown so attached to them all in the last five months, and I wish that I could take all of them with me to Rainbow Bridge!
Sometimes Courtney and I plot how we can take some of our kids back to the US with us and raise our own little multi-cultural families. We could have kids from all over the world – Chinese, Japanese, French, Hispanic, German, etc. Naturally, we would never really take anyone’s children, but it is still kind of funny to think about.
So anyway, the end of the year has been crazy busy… Parent-Teacher Conferences are over, finally and I survived. Not only was it my first official PTCs, but it was a one of a kind experience. Both Ms. Qian and I sat with the parents. I am fortunate enough that the majority of my parents speak a decent amount of English, and of course I had Ms. Qian there to help translate if necessary, but it was definitely interesting. It still baffles when I think about the kind of things that a lot of parents are concerned about, and we do not have the same kinds of policies or socials norms to follow here in regards to PTC. The parents always want to know how their child is doing compared to other children, or a specific child. I usually defer the question and talk about developmental milestones, but the Chinese teachers will blatantly state, your child is not as smart as the other child.
As a teacher in the US, I know better than to talk about any other children with a parent – it is a lawsuit waiting to happen if you accidentally say the wrong thing to the wrong person. There are also confidentiality laws that protect children, but not here! During a conference, a parent flat out asked, does so and so have autism. I know he has problems and I don’t want my child to act like him… I mean really? I was thinking, how dare you say something like that, then again, I had to remember that saying something like that is not considered rude or anything, and the Chinese teacher had a conversation about that child to another child’s parent. Can you even imagine?
But anyway, my conferences went well. My kids are all doing so well and I am so proud of their progress since January. Of course, I had a couple concerns about children and I was a little bit nervous to talk to the parents about it (no one wants to tell the mother bear that her cub is not perfect), but I did not have any issues. I was so happy when conference week was over.
Now I have been spending the last couple weeks doing nothing but portfolios. While I really like the idea of the portfolios, I HATE doing them. I basically have to make a scrap book for each child in my class (18 kids) with 40 pages each. It has just been a pain in the butt, going through all my pictures and getting them printed, and then coming up with the different pages to do for all the kids, gathering work samples and whatnot, and then actually putting it all together in an aesthetically pleasing way for the kids. It is not like it is difficult, and I actually really enjoy doing these kinds of things, but it is just so repetitive and time consuming. I literally, go to school, go home and sit on my couch for hours surrounded by photos and papers, and then go to bed exhausted. I am amazing how exhausted it makes me even though I am just sitting there.
At this point, I am done with all but four of them. Morgan wants to see half of them tomorrow, so I brought in the ones I have finished today to give to him. Since I decided to boycott anything productive yesterday, I did not even look at portfolios, but I plan on finishing the last four tonight so that I can turn them in tomorrow and not have to think about them over the weekend. I cannot wait to be done! Then I am giving them to my students next Wednesday when we have our Preschool Graduation/Pot Luck. Then Thursday the 30^th is our last day L