Thanks Mom!

“I hope your dreams take you to the corners of your smiles, to the highest of your hopes, to the windows of your opportunities, and to the most special places your heart has ever known..” -Author Unknown

I guess a little bit of kindergarten teacher rubbed off on me.

One of my favorite creative things that I did with my students this year was to design bulletin boards around the kids' photos. At the beginning of the year, I took the kids' pictures holding speech bubbles with their name on it. (This really helped me learn their names!) Then when we began our exponents unit, I photoshopped superhero capes on students in order to create a "Powers of Ten" bulletin board. And, then to finish off the year, I took each students' photo and then placed them in a "What are we doing over spring break?" venn diagram before we learned about set theory. Of course, I didn't take a single picture of any of the bulletin boards. But believe me when I tell you that they were pretty cool.

The students loved looking at the photos. Every trip to the pencil sharpener, every class change was extended with a look at the board. Let's hope that it helped them master the mathematical concepts, too.

To celebrate the end of the year and to invite the students to reflect on how much they've grown through the year (note that I did not use the word "matured"), I made individual hybrid scrapbook pages for each students, complete with an inspirational quote and a note from me.

Of course, these are middle-schoolers and half of them are boys. So, expecting that all of my students would cherish and treasure this special sentiment was a bit unreasonable. My favorite question of today was from Anthony who asked me with a quizzical look on his face, "what in the world am I supposed to do with this?" I'd like to think that even those who tossed their souvenirs got a kick out of seeing their photos. These kids will definitely hold a special place in my heart. My first 93 kids.