Today was the last day I'll see some of my elementary school kids ever! Two of them are graduating from fifth grade this year and are going on to middle school next year. The rest of them I won't see again until after summer break. Now that the school year is winding down, I can honestly say it's been a very good year and that I'm excited I'll be returning in the fall. At the same time, I'm looking forward to a two-and-a-half month break from the kiddos.
I held a pizza and game party today for all of the kids on my caseload. It went...OK. I ordered two large pizzas for 15 kids, and unfortunately, three of my first graders were complete pigs and ate way more than their share (they each ate about four or five slices and threw away at least half a slice each because they were too full), so some kids only got one small slice and left the party undoubtedly still hungry. I ended up not getting any pizza for myself because we ran out only 20 minutes into the hour-long party! Luckily my colleague came to my rescue by bringing in three bags of popcorn from his office, so I was able to give more food to some of the still starving older kiddos. After the pizzas had been obliterated, the kids broke out all of the board and card games I regularly play at the end of their therapy sessions, and had a blast playing them with each other without the usual time constraints that they always have during therapy. I felt really bad that we ran out of food and that so many kids kept asking, "Is there any more pizza?", but both the psychologist and resource teacher told me they thought the party was a success and that it seemed like all of the kids had had fun. One of my third graders (who was one of the students asking if there was more pizza) told me afterwards, "This was the best party ever!" so I think maybe I'm just being too hard on myself. I should just chalk this up to a learning experience. Next year, when I am planning a year-end party, I need to remember the following: 1) order just pepperoni pizzas and don't bother with a cheese pizza, and if I have the same number of kids on my caseload, order four pizzas instead of two, so that I can also invite the resource teacher and psychologist; 2) serve the pizza to the kids and give them a limit as to how many slices they can have; and, 3) if I have the same number of kiddos, buy at least three cartons of lemonade instead of one, and still buy one bottle of apple juice and one jug of water.
Tomorrow is officially the last day of the school year, but I don't work at my elementary school site on Thursdays. I'll be back on Friday, though, which is a teacher work day, to finish up end-of-the-year paperwork and to clean up my room and old files. I have about 20 or so progress reports to write and a bunch of reports to print and file. I also started going through the files in the two file cabinets yesterday, and have been purging tons of old IEPs. Seriously, some of the files I've found so far are of kids who have long since finished elementary school and may even be in their senior year of high school already. Why are these still here?? I keep asking myself. Hopefully I'll get through the rest of the file cabinet on Friday and I'll manage not to break the inclusion teacher's shredder. I shredded about four inches worth of paper today (four full bins worth of shreddings!) and still have another eight inches of stuff I need to shred sitting on my shelf. However, I still have another 175 files to go through, so I'm a little frightened on the shredder's behalf.
This whole year has been a great learning experience, and now that it's all behind me, I can say that it's gone by fast (if you'd asked me in January or February, I would definitely have told you otherwise). There are definitely things I will do differently next year, but I'm on my way to making next year more successful already. For instance, I've already made my caseload list for next year, with all of the students who I think will be returning filled in. I've also set up a tentative therapy schedule for the next school year, and by Friday I should hopefully have a cleaner and emptier file cabinet.
Tonight I met up with my bosses, supervisor, and fellow SLPs at a local Mexican restaurant for margaritas and appetizers. We were celebrating the end of the school year, and also celebrating the end of my CF, which officially ends on July 3rd. For those of you who don't know what a CF (clinical fellowship) is, it's a nine-month fellowship that speech-language pathology graduates undergo after graduating. We are allowed to work as SLPs and get paid, but we are still supervised by an experienced and licensed SLP who has been in the field for at least three years. Our supervisor must sign off on all of our paperwork and supervise us for at least eight hours a month (four of which must be direct supervision and the other four may be consultation). After July 3rd, I'll be licensed and will be able to practice independently. It also means that I must get new business cards, because my title will no longer be "M.S., CFY-SLP" but "M.S., CCC-SLP." My company gave me a beautiful leather portfolio that I can bring to meetings and IEPs for holding my reports and taking notes, complete with an engraved plate on the inside with my name and new title. I feel so professional!
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