Last Blog 2019-2029 School Year

Happy summer room 9 families. You did it! Parents, you successfully helped your children navigate the 4th quarter of their first grade year from home. Who would have ever thought you would become your child, or children's, teacher while trying to run a household and still work your own jobs all at the same time - during a world wide pandemic! What a way to end. Give yourselves a pat on the back, you all did it. You made it work for your family, and you reached the end. Congratulations to all! I hope you all have enjoyed your first, well deserve week of summer. Here are some last items of business.

Summer Birthday's- We usually get to end the year with a summer birthday celebration. It is our chance to recognize our friends who have birthday's over the summer. Obviously, we did not get to do this. We also missed some of our fourth quarter birthdays as well due to the closures. So I wanted to be able to say Happy Birthday to all my kiddos who we did not get to celebrate in person.

 Addisyn, Raymond, Slim, Elsie and Jayla! 

(I owe you all a birthday cup 😁)

Summer School:  Summer school will look a little different this year. There will not be live, summer school. Instead a group of amazing FUSD educators will be working hard in the month of June to create lessons based on the summer school themes. These lessons will be interactive and include things like virtual fieldtrips (from what I was told anyway). The best part is they are available to everyone! They will be posted on the FUSD website in July. Please, take advantage of this resource this summer, especially if your child is in need of reading help! Thank you.

The Million Dollar Question:  Like every teacher in America, I know parents want to know what next year will look like. I know I have always been honest about every step of the process with you, and I promised to keep you updated with any new information. I plan to uphold that throughout this summer. That is why it pains me to inform you that as of yesterday Governor Doug Ducey announced his plan is to open up schools in the fall. State Superintendent of Schools Kathy Hoffman is supposed to follow up on Monday with what exactly that means and what that will look like. I hesitated to write this because in my opinion, although it may be the announcement that was made, it was made way too soon. There is no way we can know what our state, city, or district will look like in 2/3 months and I think we need to be monitoring the situation for a little longer before we can be making such definitive decisions for next school year. That is only my opinion on the situation, and I will support decisions made. I just am confused on how they can be made this early. Will this decision change? I do not know, but if it does I will update you. I will continue to keep you informed throughout the summer. Try not to worry about any of it, who knows how it will change as next school year draws near.

Now for my confession. Last Friday I cried for about 5 good solid minutes. Crazy tears, dog looking at me like I was insane. It was probably one of the hardest last days of school ever. How do you end the year when you do not get to hug your babies as they walk out the door, proud new 2nd graders. It was so depressing closing my computer as opposed to waving goodbye to 23 beautiful little humans, packing up my room, and closing my door on another successful school year. The hardest non goodbye boodbye ever. So please, hug them for me today. Read them a story for me, my favorite thing to do with them. And tell them I am so proud of them becoming 2nd graders. They will always be my babies (or as Lylah would say, my Mama Mia babies - inside joke). Have a great summer Room 9 families. Hope to see you all soon! 💚 - Ms. Shaw