The end of the year is here!

It is not just me who can feel summer coming.  Every Thursday when I arrive in the 8th grade classroom I see a countdown on the board letting everyone who passes through the room know just how many days until graduation.  Not only is there a countdown for the number of days, but the number of school days as well.  Homework seems like a thing of the past, and grades are starting to slip. "Who cares Ms. S? We already got into high school!" Do not even get me started on the few days where the sun is shining outside.  Talking is almost worthless, and the days feel like recess all day long. 

Now that the students feel like summer should have already started, and they think the last weeks of school are pointless, what are some tips to keep them focused?  I have found that little projects that have to do with them graduating and moving into the future is key.  To get the 8th graders to keep writing the teachers have them write thank you notes to their parents, and other special people in their lives.  There are still drafts, but because the writing feels relevant, even at the end of the year, so they are still willing to put in an effort to this assignment.

I can feel summer coming on, so the fact that graduating 8th graders (who have been in the same school since kindergarten) are producing work and paying attention most of the time feels amazing. 

Summer here we come!

Cyber Bullying

I have been working in an 8th grade classroom all year, and I have rarely seen any bullying going on right in front of me.  However, I hear a lot about the bullying that goes on outside of school.  I have been thinking a lot about making the classroom a utopia away from the rest of the world they will have to deal with, but what do I do when most of the hate is taking place outside of school?  Obviously the bullying that is taking place outside of the school grounds is affecting the students when they come back to school.  They know which one of their peers is talking about them online, or harassing them on the phone via texts, so when they come to school being around their peers is very uncomfortable. 
Thinking about facebook, and students with cell phones, and all the internet access that students have before they can even drive boggles my brain sometimes.  I feel like I would have been so overloaded as a student.  Dealing with peer pressure at school was bad enough, but adding in all the new extra ways that students can feel excluded and banished would be overwhelming.  It feels like students are able to hide behind the internet and express anything that comes into their head instantly.  They do not have to practice filtering the things they say because they did not have a face, a person, right in front of them showing them the effects of their words.  This generation of students, not having to face the consequences of their actions immediately, is becoming more and more bold with the things they say about each other.  How do we monitor our students on the internet? What can we do if most of the bullying is taking place outside of the utopia we are trying to create?

What happened to teacher support over the years?

When I was growing up I used to listen to stories my grandpop would tell me of his youth.  "I used to walk to school up hill both ways, in the snow, barefoot..." "When I was in school the nuns used to keep us in line with anything they could get their hands on and throw at us!"  While some of the stories he used to tell me were highly over exaggerated, some of them were truer than I could even imagine.  The teachers in his day were the absolute.  What they say went, and the parents were behind them no matter what.  I remember a story of a teacher throwing an eraser at my grandpop and when he told his mother that he did not actually do anything she said "well think of it as punishment for something you did not get caught for!"
Even when I was in grade school, if I got into trouble my parents were convinced I deserved whatever was coming to me.  With the readings we have been doing as of late I am worried that I am not going to have any support that I am used to seeing and hearing about.  I am by no means saying that we should go back to the days of throwing things at our students.  I am not a person who thinks that physical punishment solves anything, but I would like to see the support that the teachers received from that time.  I am wondering why over the years the amount of power the teachers had is decreasing and the blame is increasing?  Were we, as students brought up to think that teachers are always in the right, now rebelling through our own kids?  Do we need more control now because we did not have any when we were in school? Where did all the support go?