Hey Veronica,

Yep, 5th grade too! I teach in Minneapolis at a public inner city school and I have 28 kids right now, but our population tends to be very transient, so you never know how many you'll have. All I know is that all but about 5 of my kids are below grade level in Math and Reading and so having 28 and trying to catch everyone up (meet everyone's needs) seems impossible at times. I won't get on my soapbox too much, but if education were really a priority in this country we'd spend a little more money to make sure class sizes remained on the small side (between 20 and 25 kids.) Even adding one, two, three more kids to a room can make a big difference to class dynamics and your ability to meet everyone's needs! Anyway, Minneapolis has been cutting teachers left and right (I've been laid off the past 2 years-even though I'm a tenured teacher, although luckily always called back) and they are losing/disenfranchising (is that the right word? How can a teacher not have a dictionary in her house?! ) many dedicated and qualified teachers as they fumble their way through dealing with the budget crunch...I hope your district does a better job handling staffing issues

I'm glad to hear that I'm not the only one who takes a break to check out what's going on here during the school day! I'll stop feeling guilty about it now

Wow, year round school...we have a couple of those here in my area, but honestly it probably doesn't hold the same draw as it does in California, because we have only about 4 good months of weather a year (unless you like cold and snow- which I personally do not, even though I've lived here my whole life) and that's during the summer break, so we'd hate to give any of it up by going to school year round It would be nice to have more frequent breaks though!! I'm already counting down to our first day off--Oct 16th I think

Good luck with the rest of your year, enjoy your well deserved break!!

Kristin