It doesn’t matter whether you have a week left in the school year or a single day, just like any other break, be it winter or spring, you must keep pushing the envelope.
This doesn’t mean that you can’t schedule more learning games or have a (measured and time-limited) end-of-year celebration.
It just means that sidelining academics and lowering standards just because summer is around the corner is a mistake.
Here’s why:
Misbehavior
Like day turns into night, when standards and expectations drop misbehavior increases. If you back off your urgent push for excellence even a tad, you signal that the mice can start playing.
Add to it the inevitable and accompanying failure to follow your classroom management plan as consistently before, and you’ll be out of your mind with stress when the final bell finally rings.
Message
All that talk about the importance of school and learning and treating others with respect starts flying out the window the moment you take your foot off the gas.
Fair or not, it sends the message to your students that you really didn’t mean it. Your motive was ulterior, meant to hide the truth that you’re not a leader who lives their convictions but rather just another adult looking out for themself.
Time
Public schools are failing. They’re spiraling along with many private schools as well. Thus, every moment with students must be an urgent and relentless pursuit of excellence.
When it isn’t, we further reinforce the belief a growing number of students have that education doesn’t matter. After all, how can it be important if you’re willing to forgo independent reading time in favor of a movie they’ve seen a dozen times.
Resonate
I realize that many teachers are already out for the summer. No matter. The lesson remains: Urgency in teaching and learning must never let up.
The same Friday afternoon as Monday morning. May as in August. The day before Halloween as the day following spring break.
It all matters. Every second.
It’s important to mention that if you use the SCM approach, and therefore your students love and appreciate being a part of your classroom, then your students won’t care one wit about eating junk food on the last day of school.
Sign their yearbooks and T-shirts. Allow them to commemorate their memories. All good. Allow and plan for it.
But beyond this, lowering academic standards and behavioral expectations will only damage them, their future, and their memory of you.
So be different than the swarms of below-average teachers filling up our schools.
Stand your ground for what is right. Refuse to give in. Be a leader whose impact resonates in the lives of your students for months, years, and decades later.
PS – If teaching has become stressful for you, check out my new book Unstressed: How to Teach Without Worry, Fear, and Anxiety.
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An important and timely reminder! Thank you!
June is coming rapidly. And this means that when it comes to sub plans, I’m often left to my own devices even for a planned teacher absence. I have taken to carrying board games and uno cards with me everywhere I go just to make sure the kids have something to do, and stay out of trouble. Any tips for subs in June?
This is awesome advice. EOY can be very stressful for this very reason.
Hard as it may seem, I always follow this rule. I teach different classes and age groups in a school so if I “let my hair down” -in this case, my board marker-, chaos will prevail. I keep up with my schedule and my pupils know that they will too until the last day. Of course we play games etc but I always aim for in-context activities, that is, things connected to my subject and the material we’ve covered in class. This keeps them focused and controlled.
It’s hard to do this when alot of students work towards an AP test or getting an exemption for their semester exam. All the students in my school know they are going to be done a week and a half before the last day so of course that last week and a half is hell.
Growing up in NY, we had a month of school after AP tests. This month was often a wasteland. My AP calc teacher came up with the best solution I’ve yet encountered: we learned contract bridge, and we learned it with the seriousness with which we’d learned calculus for the preceding 8 months. Nightly homework, weekly tests, the works.
Have posed the question and woukd like research to be done as to why misbehavior and even mean behavior between kids increases so dramatically as the end of school nears. You answered. Imposition of routine, standards, and learning time decreases and good behavior follows.
This is exactly right! I could give a 6th point- if your colleagues start acting like class is over, we all suffer. If disrespect is allowed in one class, it will make it that much harder in other classes. Great read!
This is so true! When I hear other teachers overemphasize – just a few more days – I try not to give it too much attention – it somehow reduces my motivation and thereby effort to do my best. The last few days of school needs almost as much planning as the first few days of school – of meaningful activities as well as celebratory activities
Thank you for this reminder
Yes! I wish my principal would set the expectation that we continue with academics even after testing is over.
Yes, indeed!
And to reply to Angel’s (comment above) for any tips for subs: As a sub myself, when there is absolutely no sub plan, I do school-related educational things, such as holding a mock election in the classroom, where the students nominate “candidates” for president, vice-president, etc, and then the nominees give campaign speeches, then the students vote, and I usually let a student or two conduct the whole thing. Another thing to do is to hold a debate, where the students pick two teams of debaters (they like re-arranging the desks to create debate panels!), and they pick a moderator and a time-keeper for the debate. Before you know it, the bell rings, class is over, and you’ve done something good that (most tines) the students enjoy, instead of letting the students sleep or play video games all period.
I teach fourth grade in an inner-city school in Texas. This has always been our district’s policy.
We carve out time on the last day of school to write and deliver personal Thank You letters to school staff who have supported us during the year, especially staff who don’t have their own class, i.e. cafeteria, nurses, janitors, crossing guards, admin, etc. Students love personally delivering these and thanking staff for their essential support.
Every last day of the week, including the last day of school, we set aside a few minutes to clean the classroom. Students clean everything! If it was used by them, they clean it.
Then the whole school lines the hallways to give a clap out goodbye to our fifth graders.
I have been a teacher, a pricipal and a coordinator for almost 45 years and my motto all these years has been, PLAN YOUR WORK AND WORK YOUR PLAN FROM DAY ONE TO THE LAST DAY OF THE SCHOOL. This leaves no room for indiscipline and waste of time. I also believe in this Biblical truth:
There’s time to laugh,there’s time to cry; there’s time to be born and there’s time to die. After following these rules I leave no room for regrets. My students know from day one that teaching to me means business. Therefore, every minute at school counts. When I feel that my students need recreation, then I play meaningful games with them knowing that those games will not only entertain them ,but also improve their knowledge of English Language.
Today, we can find dozens of websites that provide us with very interesting information, games and quizzes. Why not make use of them.
I agree, the school year is not over until the last bell rings on the last day. We must keep learning until the last moment of the last day whether it be through games, puzzles, yearbook signing, conversations or what ever. Also, conduct should be a learned subject. Students should be planned for from day one of the beginning of the school until the the end of the last day and beyond. There should be some summer activities as well as some pre-fall activities.
Business as usual, up to and including the last day, is an absolute. It has to be a school wide message, adhered to by all staff. To act otherwise is to undermine the efforts of those staff who ” do the right thing”.