Summer Shutdown. Those words are the subject of an email I just received about shutting down and storing computers over the summer. Summer shutdown, however, is starting to mean something else as we enter the last six days of the school year.
Students are definitely shutting down. When the come to the high school as freshmen, they aren't ready for the extreme change in mentality that happens between 8th and 9th grades. The last two weeks of school aren't free days anymore. Just because you have already taken your state-mandated exam does not mean that learning is over. Just because you planned vacation for those last few days does not mean we are necessarily just going to let you ride off into that good night and not look back. We are still getting down to business.
But we are shutting down, too. It is harder to get up in the mornings. It is harder to be so dilligent while you are sitting there working hard on your little final project. It is so much harder to be patient.
Summer shutdown has set in, but the year is not over. These are the days when we have to pull ourselves up by the bootstraps and march forward...even if we are trudging ever so slightly. And dragging the lackluster student body behind us...
