My kids have 12 days of school left in kindergarten. They are ready for first grade. I’m in awe of how much they have grown in 168 days of school. All but about three are reading. Most of them very well. I spent last week at the “I Teach K” National Kindergarten Conference and had a great time, lots of great ideas for starting off the new year. THAT’s coming too soon. Over the last couple of days, my kids have been reporting that they have received their class assignments for next year. Since most of our kinder classes are at around 25 kids, and all the first grades are mandated at 16 to 1, they will not all be together next year. The school is shifting some of them onto different year-round schedules so it sounds like there will only be three or four of them in each class together, but they know most of the other kindergarten kids so it should be OK.
The hard part is going to be the SHORT time between the end of this year and the beginning of the next. Seven non-contractual days (counting one weekend) between when we are done with this year and when we have to report back (two non-student days on the end of this year and three on the front of next year). Two weeks without kids. That’s almost too short of a time to make the mental adjustment from the kids at the end of kindergarten and the babies coming in. But it’s not as if I get a choice whether to adjust or not…….
We were going to take a short trip, but my wife said tonight that mentally it’s starting to pile up on her and she doesn ‘t think she wants too now. I’m afraid I’m going to agree. I’ve got so much to do to wrap this year up yet, I can’t even begin to think about next year, but I find myself doing it. I asked in the front office about supplies for next year, and they won’t fill the requests yet……. Bummer.
Oh yeah, and forget about class lists, naturally the incoming kindergarten kids know who THEIR teachers are going to be, why does it always have to be such a surprise for the teachers? Although one of the cute little girls next door told me yesterday that I was going to be her sister’s kindergarten teacher next year….
Teaching Kindergarten/1st Grade 
Yikes! I thought our schedule was rough! I’m not quite sure how your calendar works. Maybe you could explain it to me?
Our school year starts in less than two weeks. This will be our first year on the “year-round” schedule. If the weather holds up, I think I might actually enjoy this schedule. (It’s been in the low 60s-mid 70s for the past 3 weeks. Yay!) Essentially, they took 4 weeks from our summer vacation and spread them out during the year. We will get a two week break in the fall (last week of Sept. and first week of Oct.) Then, they added a week to Christmas break, giving us 3 weeks off, and they added the remaining week to our spring break, giving us 2 weeks. We will get out the same time as all the other CPS schools. Not so bad, right? I’m curious to hear how your school is year is scheduled.
Good grief! I will NOT complain about my summer. lol Every year-round school my children attended returned to a regular schedule after a few years. The BEST schedule I’ve ever heard of is no school April, December, or August. We start back Aug. 10- just regular old school year.
Yep, part of my grief will be because of the switch from the track 1 schedule to the track 5 schedule, but it’s the one I’m most used too. At my previous school I was either on some version of the track 5 schedule or on extended contract with extra days(specialist, who cover all the tracks work an extended contract, but can still choose around 20 days off per year) it was largely due to the school change that I got stuck on the track 1 schedule this year.
Six more days of school, my kids are SO excited. I’m going to miss them, they have been such a good class. They scored off the charts just about on their year end tests. Even most of my low ones are at least benchmark for the end of the year. They mostly look troublesome in comparison to the ones who are much farther along.