Senior activities as the school year winds down...May 2011

It's May 2011 and it's crunch time...were quickly approaching finals, graduation, and summer school.  Often times it doesn't feel like you even have time to breathe!  Even with all the work related craziness, I think the thing that saved me was my commitment to bootcamp...at this point I was attending the 5-6am class five days a week at Bakersfield Fit and then I also tried to make it to Calvin's cross training class from 5:30-6:30ish a few nights a week.  As much as I hated waking up at 4:30 in the morning or arriving home at 7pm starving, they were a great stress release and ultimately made me feel better!  Back at school, we were planning end of the year celebrations and making constant calls home to remind parents of mandatory graduation events where they will be responsible to transport their students to and from.  Then the rush of having all final exams typed up at least a week early

because seniors take their tests early so that we teachers can get grades into the computer systems in time for the final clearance for the grad ceremony.  Amid all of that chaos, Kim Smith (my co-Deaf Ed. teacher in crime) decided that she wanted the seniors to paint the platform her dad recently built for her. 

You see, Kim is all of five foot and some change and often gets frustrated because in some of her larger classes the students in the back of the room have trouble seeing her.  In a standard classroom this wouldn't be such a big problem because the students can still hear the teacher but in our rooms this is not the case!  Our students are either Deaf or hard of hearing and actually do have to SEE us in order to "hear" us.  The signing space is primarily located in the torso area which for someone Kim's height puts her hands between 4 and 5 feet which isn't much above the head of a seated student.  So her father built her

about a 1 foot by 6 foot stage to put under her white board to teach from which she wanted brightened up!  This was a job for my 4th period art class...so we got to sketching.  Her rules were that it must be bright, must incorporate the school colors of green and blue, and because she is a girly girl it MUST have pink!!!  You be the judge, but I think we mastered it!  :)