Wednesday, June 20, 2012

3


3 - Cross-posted from Biking to School, where you can catch up on my retirement thoughts, starting in 20, and counting backward:  

Three days left being a teacher.

After an incredibly intense day in the classroom, giving away just about everything but the kitchen sink to my kids, I settled in at the computer at home to work on the Jr. Seahawk Newsletter for the last time.

It's the student newsletter, something I inherited in my third year of teaching at Arbor Heights - which means I've done it for 18 years. It was started by another teacher, Gretchen Thompson, my first year there, so this year has been Volume 21.

I have billed it for many years as "The oldest continuously published elementary school student newspaper on the Internet!" Nobody has ever questioned that, because it's true. It first appeared online, on the school's website, in 1994.

jrseahawknews

Just for kicks and giggles I decided to count all the editions. 144. At an average of 4 hours production time per issue, that works out to 576 hours. Roughly 16 school weeks. Count the several from 2002 and 2004 I have on my computer, never got uploaded (but will this summer), and we're looking at 18 school weeks, easily.

Half a year's worth of work, sitting at my computer, getting student writing edited and online.

Tomorrow I have to get there extra early to run off 400 copies. For the last time.

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