"Mrs. P"....or in some cases "Mr. P"

My first week as an official teacher has come to an end...and to say that I am exhausted would be an incredible understatement. This experience has truly been a roller coaster of emotions. I have absolutely fallen in love with my 11 fourth grade students, they are so sweet, eager to learn, and honestly in love with their teachers! We have "shout-outs" in our class where we are supposed write encouraging notes to our classmates and post them so that we feel more like a team. Yesterday, we gave them some time to post their shout outs, and the picture above is part of what I found after class! We may need to go over that I am Mrs. P...not Mr. P, but they are so sweet!

Moments like this certainly leave me on a high, and I really feel comfortable and enjoy teaching in front of the class. The students have been well behaved the majority of the time (I have had to issue some "consequences" on our thermometer of behavior, which kinda breaks my heart sometime, but must be done!) I can't believe how much I have learned about math after studying up for all my lessons.

The heartbreaking aspect of this experience has been the reality of where these kids are (or aren't) academically. These kids are so and really want to learn. They are craving a classroom that provides them the education they deserve. One of the toughest, but also the part of summer school is called Academic Intervention Hour. The three fourth grade teachers each take a small group and work intentionally on math and reading with their group. I have the lower-level reading group. My first day I brought my short story and had some discussion questions all picked out for my small group. I was really excited to finally do some reading with my students and to share my love of reading with them. They listened intently as I read the first page and then they were going to rotate and take turns reading aloud. This was great...until I realized the could hardly get through simple sentences. My strategy had to change, and the past few days I have been drilling them with phonics exercises. R, A, and Q (my small group students) soaked this up and truly helped me help them. Today we worked on the sounds "ch" and "ck" and by the end they were saying "Ms. P, we got this it's so easy!" Well I am definitely getting to bed early tonight...more stories to come!