An Epic Week

This week has been epic. It was a week when I tried to do something for everyone. It was my last week with my Grade 12 IB students (since the next two weeks will be Spring Break, and after that I'll be absent from school for a week to chaperone a trip to China, and after that they go on a week of "study leave" before the IB exams); my last week teaching material to Grade 11 students before their semester exams; and the week that my MS principal and I looked through and picked two Grade 7 buttons business plans to invest money into. All of my 7th-, 8th- and 9th- graders had to come to a conceptual stopping point before vacation AND they had to be sufficiently solid in the new concepts that they could do independent practice/review without me, during my week-long absence after the break. It was a week when I promised to draft up 3 different semester exams so that I could help my colleagues agree on final exam content and dates for three different grades, so that I could send my own students off on their Spring Break with all of the necessary studying information. This week, as a Grade 12 team, we had to send in audited samples of graded student portfolios to the IB Organization, and internally, we had to submit estimated IB grades for the 12th-graders. This week, I finished babysitting/monitoring the enrichment research projects for the kids who are going to China with us, and they successfully presented their projects to their parents at the last trip meeting during Monday evening.

In the end, the week was smooth, without a hitch. It has wound down beautifully, and even though I am running on 5 hours of sleep today (went dancing yesterday), I feel very satisfied with what I was able to accomplish during this week.

And, oh boy, am I ready for Spring Break! I am looking forward to being in the States for a week, followed by being in Beijing and Shanghai (while chaperoning students) for 10 days and SEEING MY PARENTS!!! and eating some yummy soup dumplings. And when I come back, it'll only be a short sprint (punctured by another whole-school field-trip week and various holidays) until the end of the school year!!