Teacher stories

I have no idea why I am still awake. The past three days, I have had a total of about 8 hours of sleep. Lesson plans, night sessions, making and grading assessments, and collab work have kept me up into the wee hours of the morning, and I am so relieved that it is finally the weekend. But my first week was incredible—I am in love with the 4^th grade. In fact, if I was offered a 4^th grade position that focused only on math (yes, it exists!) I would take it in a heartbeat. My students have quickly become my babies, despite the fact that they are quite a handful. I have loved every minute of being in the classroom, and these kids make me smile every day.

Don’t get me wrong—it’s still hard. Today was a rough day, probably because it was Friday and the kids were just as ready for the weekend as we were. But they were especially antsy and disruptive today, causing me to use my firm and serious teacher voice four times as I scolded them for their disrespectful and unacceptable behavior. Regardless, at the end of the day, they are kids and I love them. It’s so much easier to remember why we’re here when we get to see them everyday, watch them progress, and see how proud they are of themselves when we show them that they can succeed. One of my favorite things about teaching so far is watching the kids try to hide their excitement and pride when I show them their assessment stapled to our “Math Captains” board for reaching our goal of 80% or higher. It’s incredible how much influence you have over how they see themselves, and I feel so lucky that I get to encourage them and assure them that they are smart.

My other favorite thing about teaching: teacher stories. Every day, groups of teachers hang over bus seats, gather around dinner tables, and sit in common areas sharing the humorous and creative words that peppered our lessons. My friend Nikki has a first grader that spends all day rollin around the back of her classroom screaming, “I hate everyone!” Lauren had a three year old doing somersaults in her first grade classroom (he was later removed). Another girl has a student whose first name is A Precious Angel. I have so many great ones of my own, I don’t even know where to begin. Maybe with the students themselves?

Kendrick is pretty big for a rising 4^th grader, in all senses of the word. He’s also a charmer; he frequently tells my collab partners and me that we look nice, that he likes our hair, or that we can’t forget to give him a hug. He’s quite the charmer. He even tried to talk me into giving him a sticker (part of our positive behavior system) for writing on his survey that the most important people in his life were Ms. H, Ms. Parks, Ms. Winters, and Ms. Simon—after only 2 days of knowing us. At lunch one day, the kids were eating nacho chips with taco meat and cheese piled on top—the equivalent to what we called “traveling nachos” in elementary school. I told him that when I was his age, we used to eat something similar but that they would scoop it directly into a bag of Doritos. He paused for a moment, looked at me, and said, “They had Doritos back then?” When I asked him how old he thinks I am, he guessed 36. Oh my.

Makiel (pronounced Mah-kell) is my favorite. He’s one of the smallest in the class, with the most precious baby face and the sweetest demeanor. But don’t let his cute smile fool you—he can be mischievous. However, he is one of our best students in math and always tries very hard, both in academics and in behavior. It’s clear that he’s eager to learn, and he is always one of the first ones to follow the “eyes on me, lips zipped, hands in your lap” directions. He loves stickers and praise and it makes me tear up to see the pride and amazement in his eyes when I show him that he is reaching goal on his math progress tracker. One morning, the warm up activity was a journal prompt to describe a planet that you would create and what it would be like there. Makiel wrote that on his planet, he would be strong, handsome, and have nice hair. I think we have ourselves a future ladies’ man.

Frederick is my problem child. He doesn’t act up for any of the other teachers the way he acts up with me. Which is strange, because I am the toughest on him—he’s already had 2 isolation periods and a silent lunch in only 5 days. I finally pulled him aside yesterday to ask him why he misbehaves in my class, and he told me he doesn’t like sitting with groups. So today we moved his seat to the back of the room, and while he still was a little disruptive, he was engaged in the lesson and wanted to learn how to round. He’s exhausting but I’m excited to see a potential change in him over the next few weeks.

More on my other students in later posts. School in general is going really well. Although lesson planning is hard because we typically have 2 or 3 due at a time, I kind of enjoy some of the planning process and executing the lessons. The problem: we only have 45 minutes to teach a math objective. I’m not seeing the kinds of gains I was hoping for with my students because it’s very difficult to explain how to solve a word problem in 45 minutes and practice enough to be able to take a quiz on it. I need to rethink next week’s lessons and find out how I can really teach them a chunk of the objective effectively enough to master 80% of it. I could go on for hours about teaching, so if you really want to know, email you and I’ll keep you entertained. Just know that I absolutely love it. Granted it’s not quite a realistic situation—9 kids in my classroom—but it’s a start.

Tonight we went to Mrs. Lester’s house, the woman who invited us over last week for some soul food. A group of ten of us went to her house and ate a nice home-cooked meal plus dessert. It was an incredible night—a great taste of the Mississippi culture and hospitality, as well as a look into why this area is the way it is. She was incredibly generous and even invited us to her family reunion, her 4^th of July party, and her church. I wouldn’t mind going back to Mama Lester’s place.

Already gone on way too long, and I’m exhausted. Sleeping in tomorrow!