Anchorage Daily News

A buzz of stress and excitement took hold across the city this week as students, teachers and principals in Anchorage public schools got ready for today -- the last day of classes.

While most seniors have donned their caps and gowns and collected their diplomas, the rest of the district's 45,000 students finish up this afternoon.

Finals are still being taken, even today. Grades tallied. Classrooms cleaned.

This week, the Daily News visited several schools to see how they wrapped up their school year -- a time of busy closure and anticipation of today's release into the summer.

Creekside Park Elementary

KEEPING UP THE STRUCTURE

Adrian LeBlanc has been teaching for 20 years and it's always like this, she said.

"Whoo-ee. We have three days left with 50 days of work," she said, putting a well-manicured hand around the shoulder of one her fifth-grade students at Creekside Park Elementary during recess Monday afternoon.

"You have to be structured at the end of the school year," LeBlanc said, looking around at the children screaming and swarming around the blacktop, the warmth of the sun acting like a high dose of sugar in their young bodies.

She strives to keep order until the last school bell rings today, she said. "Some of these kids don't have structure at home. ... They are going into environments (this summer) where they don't have this."

The Muldoon school has some of the poorest kids in the city, with 68 percent qualifying for free or reduced-cost lunches, compared with 37 percent for the entire Anchorage School District. It is also one of the most diverse schools, with many immigrant parents working multiple jobs just to get by.

When recess is over on this day, LeBlanc tries to corral the kids back into the building for more classroom time. The kids line up along the white cinder block wall. LeBlanc walks up and down their line, her hands behind her back, her face becoming more pinched as the minutes pass.

One girl with a T-shirt that says, "Careful, I had a big bowl of ATTITUDE for breakfast," chats with a friend next to her.

Fifth grade is a tough time for kids, LeBlanc said. The students are children but entering adolescence where they want to be cool. That does not always mean respecting their teacher. And the end of the school year is often the most difficult.

LeBlanc paces back and forth, looking at her watch. "Some of you will be surprised at the amount of time you're losing from recess tomorrow," she tells them.

Back in her classroom, LeBlanc is blunt with the kids, who are now sitting cross-legged in a circle on the gray carpet. Many of their belongings were gathered on their desks in clear plastic bags with old notebooks, binders and worksheets piled inside.

"This is day one of day four that you need to make sure you keep your behavior in place," she said.

She told them a story about how two years ago, four of her students were suspended at the end of the school year. "It was embarrassing," she said in a threatening tone, then pressed them to put their chairs and desks in order to begin a quiet game.

Parent Joseph Kurzendoerfer waited outside the classroom until the end-of-the-day bell rang.

"The last week is a like a week off," he said, peering inside to see if his son, Michael, 11, was ready.

"He can't stand it. He just can't wait to go," he said, of his son's anticipation of summer vacation. His son loves LeBlanc, though. "She's simply the best."

When Michael emerges from the classroom, he's got a big smile on his face. He slings the large plastic bag over his shoulder and tells his father he's ready to go.

East High School

GOODBYES AND FREEDOM

At East High School on Tuesday afternoon, the halls were quiet. Some classrooms were empty, others full with students bent over desks, concentrating on tests. One girl sat on the hallway linoleum, filling in a multiple-choice sheet with a pencil.

When asked why she was not inside, she said: "It's too noisy in there," pointing with her chin at the classroom.

Down the hall, physics teacher Bill Ennis cleaned up his room for the final time after 25 years. The 58-year-old teacher is retiring this year to pursue a dream of sailing around the world, and maybe living in the Caribbean for a couple of years.

The watershed moment hadn't hit him yet, he said.

"The big difference will be next fall, when everyone else is coming back," he said, as he sat in the room he designed, the cabinets painted to mirror the color spectrum and the floor patterned after trigonometry math functions.

A foreign exchange student who just graduated worked on equations on a desktop computer in the corner. A junior with floppy brown hair was cleaning up around the room, putting instruments in their proper boxes and filing papers. The teenager took Ennis' physics class and is his student aide. He's planning on taking the college-level AP physics class in the fall, but he doesn't yet know who his teacher will be. If the school can't find anyone to teach the AP class -- his favorite, Ennis said, he'll consider coming in to teach it next year, while he prepares his 40-foot sailboat, Wings, for his fall 2009 adventure.

"I've had a good run," he said.

Just outside the main entrance to the school, Lily Tinai, 17, and Stephanie Sao, 16, celebrate finishing finals on Tuesday with some McDonald's. The cousins laugh over their french fries. Lily has four more finals to go but said her year was pretty much done. "I'm going to California this summer," she said, flashing a big smile.

And even though Stephanie is going to summer school to make up history and English classes, she said she was still looking forward to the freedom of summer.

Romig Middle School

KEEPING THE WEEK ON SCRIPT

"There's so much hyped excitement the last couple of days it's easier to spread it out over the week," said Romig's assistant principal Patty Hynes, as she toured the nearly empty halls of Romig Middle School in West Anchorage on Tuesday.

This means principal Sven Gustafson planned out a well-managed schedule for the week. Lockers were emptied Monday. Finals began Tuesday. The last two days are regular classes, then afternoons of soccer, football and nature films. The kids need to be kept busy, Hynes said.

Down one hallway, in Joella Buswell's seventh grade math classroom, the 20 or so students apply the last touches to their final projects. The kids collaborate putting together colorful objects, dodecahedrons, which are geometric balls with 12 faces.

Because their lockers have been emptied and school policy says the 800 students may not carry around backpacks or purses, the kids came to school this week with the few materials they need for the day in hand, usually a notebook and lunch sack.

Some teachers will be moving classrooms, others, like Mark Johannes, a seventh grade science teacher, will return to their same space. He'll collect his geraniums and take them home after giving his last finals but won't have to take down posters and classroom decorations. Some teachers will likely still be cleaning up into early next week.

"The year is ending," Hynes said. "For the kids heading to ninth grade, there's excitement, but they are also like, 'Wait a minute, I'm nervous.' "

Romig's graduating eighth-graders, who include kids in programs for Spanish immersion, autism and highly gifted, will be moving on to high schools across the city, not just next door to West High.

"I think the time really flew by this year," Hynes said.

Chugach Optional

WORKING TO THE LAST MINUTE

Chugach Optional, a downtown alternative elementary school, was quiet on Tuesday. No celebrating the coming summer.

"We take school to the very end," said principal Anne Salzer. "We keep it going as a learning environment."

In one classroom, a teacher is reading to students gathered around plush cushions and colorful quilts. Another gives individual instruction to kids at small tables on workbooks about whales. In an art class, a teacher talks about the style of Alaska painter Alvin Amason, and the kids dab brushes into yellows and blues to make their own polar bears and owls and wolves.

Chugach Optional, with 250 kids, is known for its relatively affluent students and attracts large numbers of applicants for the few openings each year. Here, in stark contrast to Creekside, only 8 percent of students qualify for free or reduced-cost lunches.

In the hallway, student Wenyin Metcalf picks through a large box of mixed paper, cutting out stapled corners of worksheets. "Our class is crazy about recycling," she said.

She's planning a trip to Washington, D.C., this summer with a friend, she said, with an ear-to-ear smile. "I'm just counting down the days."

At the end of a hallway, brown paper bags hold the artwork of kindergartners, bright swatch construction paper peeping out.

Other children make accordion-style miniature books chronicling their lives. A teacher leads a game like Jeopardy but with science questions. Another teacher, whose students are in the library, pulls out Mac laptops from a cupboard for inventory. Student work will be downloaded onto disks or zip drives for them to take home.

Tomorrow is cleanup time.

Find Megan Holland online at adn.com/contact/mholland or call 257-4343.

ADVERTISEMENT