Graduation and onwards

Yesterday was the last day of school for the students. I was at school grading bad papers and sweating the one student that had tried to play more games with me. The one that said to her CTM that she had spoken to me about her final project and the difference between that and her senior project. She handed in the 8 pages to me yesterday and there was no citations and I could tell that she hadn't written a lot of the paper herself and that she had to have taken it from somewhere. So I made her spend a couple of hours writing out footnotes and making a better bibliography. I was sweating her till the last second. It's incredible the power of "if you want to graduate you have to..." Ultimately she passed, but I mean by a hair. No room for doing any less. I spent my time grading a huge stack of papers that is making me rethink this final project thing, or at least retooling it to somehow make my life easier. Cause getting all these papers at one time and then having to grade them is a pain. Next time I need to make a better rubric for grading papers.
Yesterday was graduation for my school. There was a graduating class of 24 students and it was held at a nearby cultural center. I went to it thinking that I didn't really want to be there and that it was work, but then I realized that that is what it's all about. It's all about getting the little buggers to graduate. That's the big deal, that's what I'm doing this for. So I can see students that have the odds stacked against them graduate. That's why I'm at the school that I am at. I could have taken a cushy job somewhere else for a lot better pay, but I'm at the school that I want to be at working with the population that I want to work with. And I'm having a lot of fun doing it. I should have graded papers yesterday but I just wanted to take it easy and have a break from all the drama.
Today we had a long long staff meeting and we went over the list of people and whether we should keep them or not. This took a long time where CTMs advocated or not for their particular students. I've been given a stack of papers for the various incoming freshmen that are going to constitute my CTM next year. I've also inherited some from teachers that are leaving and the students requested me. The school year is going to be a whole different thing when I got my CTM. There's going to be a lot more demanded of me in terms of time and commitment. Culling the list took pretty much the whole day with a longish break for lunch. I like this process though where the teachers and staff decide who to let back in or not. It's not a black and white stay or go thing either. We assign novel reviews, community service, and other stuff to be done over the summer. We would also refer people to CTM meetings or staff meetings. These would be meetings were we would jam people.