On being a second-year teacher...

So, now that my last post happened almost a full year ago...maybe embarking on a blog as a first-year teacher (and someone with a long history of being bad at consistent journaling/blogging) wasn't the wisest choice. Hindsight is always 20/20, I suppose.

You may have noticed a change - 2nd grade! I moved down a grade level, which, as most things in the public schools, wasn't my choice, but it was actually something that I welcomed with open arms. Granted, I didn't really know what kinds of changes I had in store, but they have turned out to be quite refreshing. Let me preface this post with a short statement about the rest of last year.

It's all but impossible to sum up one's first year of teaching with any semblance of brevity. That said, last year was full of glorious moments of teaching and learning as well as dark days of stress and feelings of inadequacy. My job and my students tried me in ways that I never thought possible, and in return, I pushed back, trying with all my might to enable my students to meet their goals. Many of them did not, and that was due largely to my failures or shortcomings. The day I said that out loud for the first time was one of the most humbling in my life. However, many of my students made great strides toward becoming lifetime learners. And one of my favorite parts of my day this new year is seeing my students from last year on the playground every afternoon. They have grown so big and so mature; I am proud to continue to call them my own.

Now, living in the present, I've got a lovely bunch of coconuts, and 2nd graders, too. (The coconuts part just sort of snuck out as I was typing that sentence). 18, to be precise. Although one is moving at the beginning of October, as he has informed me multiple times. As a general rule, my students this year are more compliant, better mannered, and more excited about school than my students last year. On the flip side, because they are a year younger (and consequently in a drastically different developmental stage...7 to 8 is a big gap), there are many things that I took for granted that my third graders could do that my second graders cannot (yet). For example:

1) A remarkable number of my students still write their numbers and letters backwards. It's not a dyslexia issue, it's simply developmental pattern. Some of my students, though, still reverse letters in their own name! Definitely unexpected. It will be fun, though, to see them stop doing so as the year progresses.

2) 2nd graders are not nearly as well-trained for doing independent work as third graders. They just can't hold as many directions in their mind at once. An easy fix, though. Just a bit of training and they'll be good to go.

3) 7 year old attention spans are approximately half as long as 8 year old attention spans. Which weren't that long to begin with, so...you do the math. Enough said.

I'm also doing a lot of kinds of teaching this year that I didn't do last year - like teaching phonics, for instance. In 3rd grade, the focus is so heavily set on reading comprehension that if a student enters third grade unable to decode words, they are all but left behind because there is no focus on actually how to read, only how to understand what you read. This year, though, we are spending 15-20 minutes every day learning about sound/spelling patterns and word parts. This week we're focusing on the long a sound, spelled a and a_e. Which lends itself to fun teacher talk like "In the 'a-consonant-e' pattern, the e at the end is a magic e! It makes the a say it's name!" I feel much more like I'm on a children's TV show and less like the teacher in Peanuts. (Womp womp womp womp womp womp womp.)

In any case, a new year brings new joys and new challenges. I'm going to try to do a better job keeping this updated this year, because I feel much more like I have a life outside of teaching, which might lend itself to blogging. Or exploring Charlotte. One or the other.

I leave you with a quote (attributed to many people, most famously MLK, Jr.) I heard at a community event I attended last night, which has no direct tie to education, but it has been bopping around in my mind all day: "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."