spring break is coming to an end...

SPRING BREAK came at the perfect time this year. The weather was beautiful (until today..) and I'm refreshed & ready to hit the ground running with my students from now until Kindergarten graduation in May.

It was so good for me to be back with my ministry -- youth. God has shaped me into a Kindergarten teacher, obviously, but I do a much better job within the church working with teenagers. This year, I've been teaching preschool choir on Wednesday nights, which makes for very long Wednesdays. I teach all day, stay late getting cleaned up & ready for Thursday, drive to choir, teach choir for an hour, go to prayer meeting, & then my own choir practice until 8:30. When I say LONG day, I mean LONG day. My patience is so thin by the time preschool choir starts, & it's so hard on me not being able to structure my choir the way I do my classroom. I can't really get on to the kids because it's church, so in turn, it's me against 17 three-six-year-olds, and they run all over me. This doesn't happen at school because I am so structured, but I don't know how to maintain a structured church classroom without stepping on anyone's mama's toes. Next year, I've got to get away from this and start doing what I was designed to do- minister to teenagers.

One of the BIGGEST challenges I've faced this year is figuring out when on earth to assess my students. Supposedly, first-year-teachers typically struggle with classroom management, paper work, lesson planning, feeling secluded, etc... I don't have any of those problems. I had trouble with classroom management until the fourth day of school, when my principal asked me if I needed help getting my class under control. That was enough for me to evaluate what was going on & to get it under control, and I did.
Paper work takes time, but I'm good about not waiting until the last minute to do things. I've got my kids sample work divided by subject (language & math), we keep a writing portfolio, their assessments are updated & organized.
Lesson planning is time-consuming but it comes pretty naturally for me. Learning to not plan way too much was something I needed to work on at the beginning of the year, but I've got it down now.
Feeling secluded was never, ever an issue. I have a wonderful mentor teacher, Kym, who experiments with my ideas with me, is honest when things are good or terrible, gives me lots of materials & ideas, and ends up mentoring me with other aspects of my life, outside of teaching. She knows more about my personal life than my own family does.

My biggest hurdle is when do you test these babies? It's not like I can put up dividers & give them tests whole-group like you can with older students. We do have to test this way sometimes (Terra Nova, Kindergarten grade-level tests, etc), but for me to know which letters of the alphabet my students know & don't know, I have to test them away from their classmates. Did you know 5 year olds cheat without knowing they're cheating? They do. They can pretend to know the answer just by waiting a half-second after someone else has answered the question & then they'll write it or say it aloud. In college, I was always told, assess while you teach. Give the students a project or activity, and assess the skills as they work, but it is NOT that easy with five-year-olds who are new to the world of cutting, gluing, coloring, and writing. I am proud of my students' progress, don't get me wrong, but the only time I've found I can test my kids individually is during centers *when I should be teaching a guided reading group!!

I was working on my lesson plans for this week... getting so excited about teaching a writing lesson during my small group time & I realized, I've got to be finishing up this checklist... which means instead of teaching my fun lesson, I have to pass it on to my assistant teacher to teach & I get to assess. I wish first year teachers could get student teachers. I got to do all of these kinds of lessons while my supervising teacher assessed, so the kids were able to get it all in. AND oh my goodness, to observe a first year teacher's struggles in the classroom might be awesome for knowing what to expect & overcome the next year. Experienced teachers sometimes forget all that goes on in the first year... I get asked all the time, "Why are you going up to the school today? It's Saturday!" But I don't have materials already prepared & laminated from previous years. Also, I don't do well under pressure. My pencils had better be sharpened before my kids walk in the door or the chaos will make me crazy.