The final lesson is survival

Rookie: For a first-year teacher in Carroll County, the end of school marks a year of challenges, achievements.

By the time the last bell rings at Mount Airy Middle at 1:10 p.m. today, Andersen estimates that she will have graded 1,500 tests and 2,000 projects, scraped 12 pieces of gum off 12 desks, sat through 133.5 hours of study hall and eaten 140 bags of microwave popcorn for afternoon energy boosts.

She will have heard dozens of excuses for missing homework assignments -- the most popular being that the child finished the homework but didn't have it with him. She will have passed out "10,000 little orange library notices" to children with overdue books. And in these final weeks of school, she will have collected more field trip permission slips, tracked down more missing textbooks and attended more band concerts and chorus performances than she cares to count.

Yet, she intends to come back for more.

"I can't help it, but already I'm starting to think about next year, how to change things and how to make them better," Andersen said.

Topping the list are getting a better calculator, improving the angle of her slide projector and finding a portable stereo so that she can play classical music while her pupils work.

"At the end of the day, it's my first year, and I'm still excited to teach," she said. "That's the best affirmation to me."