Day 25: The Wrap Up- Did I Get It Done? #AprilBlogADay

Prompt: Wrapping Up The School Year- How will you know if you did what you needed to do this year?

I don't know if you are like me, but usually in early August, about 4 weeks before school starts, the ideas really begin to start flowing and developing.  All the things I want to do differently, to try, begin to take shape.  Last year I taught AP Lang for the first time.  I also had cancer last year.  The second half of my school year was a bit of a mess. I did everything I could to keep up with work and manage my own care and healing.  Being sick and being a teacher is perhaps the most difficult thing I have had to do. I had hoped that this year would be easier.  It was not.  I had surgery to help my paralyzed vocal cord in November and a week into my recovery I found out I had gallstones (as a result from weight loss surgery in November 2013).  You can read more about that journey here. 

The first 4 months of 2016 have been painful and exhausting.  I used all my self-treated days and had to go into my bank of days I have saved.  I know this is what they are for, but I have tremendous guilt about what I have not done this year.  I know there are students who were mad at me for missing so much work.  "If she doesn't care enough to be here...."  Things like that are heartbreaking.  There are few things more important to me than my teaching, my kids.  When my health and my body stopped me from being my best self, it made me angry and disappointed. I scrambled to try and revamp and work with my collaborating teachers to make sure things didn't get too far off track.  I put things into place in the last 6 weeks to ramp up.  The AP exam is May 11th.  We will know in July if the ramp up paid off.  For my 10th graders, we are going to begin writing prep for the global history regents exam in June.  I have a handful of 11th graders I will be working with to prep for retaking the ELA exam, also in June.  So it seems the best indicators are going to be test scores.  Did I, we...do what we needed to do this year.  I hope so.  Time will tell.