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April 2008- 1st year teaching

I have 4 kids who get speech therapy twice a week. Today, my favorite girl took her mini reader we've been working on to speech to read to the therapist. Why did the therapist come back crying with joy? she interrupted my whole group reading to tell me that my heart (D.Jones), is pronouncing so well; reading with fluency, intonation and prosody, she's doing a WONDERFUL job, and she kept on going on and on. then she started welling up again and added, "you are such a marvelous teacher, oh my gosh the growth in your students! please always send the mini readers with them cause its literally bring tears to my eyes to see and hear the product of your awesome work!! I am so proud! Ms. Kutieboots you are doing an awesome job!"

*batting eyelashes* who me??? lil ole newbie me?? AWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!! SHUCKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!

wait. I have one more reason to be excited. technically, two.

So i volunteered to do after-school tutoring with kinders who are on the bubble of promotion. All of us submitted names to the reading coach of children who need an extra boost in reading and reading skills and therefore will move on to 1st grade. Mind you, I volunteered. I went to pick up my students (who come from the 5 other teachers, we don't get our own students) and why did they cheer cause I was their tutor?? Who was feeling her head inflate a little bit?

me.

Get back to my classroom and I outline how our 1 hour sessions will be. Time really does fly when you're having fun! I wanted just 15 more minutes!!! Oh well, we did 3 out of the 4 12-minute activities I had planned but I was able to get in my read-aloud. Dr. Se.uss is an AWESOME man. Pure genius. I need allllll his books in my life. Him and eric ca.rle. Anyway, I read I Can Read with My Ey.es Shut and emphasized the part, "the more you read, the more you know". Its so true!!!! reading is the best thing you can do for a child. Even if its a book they already know, read it over and over again for fluency which is a GINORMOUS deal!

damn! in my excitement, i need to digress!!

So about tutoring that i volunteered for. Why did I find out that we get paid for this?

who's too happy to do what she loves and get paid for it? Oh my gosh, God is so good!

one last thing that is tied to this. another teacher had one of my babies. another one of my cuties who I adore. mad rapper from boston who loves to play basketball... anyhoo, she said my student was a delight and the most well mannered child in her group. so excited and driven to do well!!

guess who was beaming from ear to ear??

me.

*sigh* I love my job.

May 2008- 1st year teaching

there are 19 days of school left. i've lost a student (she moved) and gained a student (today was his 1st day) in the past 14 days.

i'm retaining 3, two of them are ESOL (eng speakers of other languages). ESOL retention is one of the hardest things you have to do. so much red tape! the school and the coordinator have to CTA (think crypogram, T=Y) and make sure its not cause of the language difference this child didn't make gains... blah blah blah. NO, THE CHILD STILL CAN'T WRITE THEIR NAME! THE CHILD KNOWS 10 capital letters and 6 lower case letters! no letter sounds, no numbers, can't give me ONE sight word, doesn't know the front cover from the back, cannot even copy a sentence of the board, NOTHING!

See, the problem with America is that they worry about being soooo P.C., that's it not P.C. I remember there was some BS about not using red pens or markers cause that would offend Asian students. I would bet my next paycheck it wasn't an Asian parent coming in complaining about that, but a cauc thinking too hard!

Whatever the case, I can't believe I'm sending my babies to 1st grade! I look at them and can't believe where they came from! I look at pics I took along the school year and see all the teeth that have come and gone, the coloring and play-doh activities that have turned into independent writing, books with 4 big words on a page that have been replaced with 3 or four sentences with size 14 font...

we're doing addition now and my heart SWELLS with joy at how fast they are absorbing this concept. to think that most could only count to 10 and they were showing off if they could count to 20 when I first got them. They can count by 2s, 5s and 10s now.

One of my darlings has a pet hamster. He named it Ms. Kutieboots

My babies aren't that anymore.

hey bush, can I have just ONE child left behind??

Fine.
Happy Belated Mother's Day to me.

*

April 2009- 2nd year of teaching

Yo, there are some 50 school days left in the year! I can't wrap my mind around that... I basically have two months to get my kinders even tighter than they are! OMG, my students have BLOSSOMED in the last few weeks!! There was a point where we were all on the up and up and then it seemed like they plateau-ed. I was worried. Oh no, these children are pulling tricks out their bags and are quite frankly, STUNNING me! For example, writing.

Writing has always been my least fave subject to teach. Its so subjective and there is no "right" way to teach kinders how to write. Math is cut and dry. Reading is letters, then sounds, then blending. Writing? *exasperated sigh*

I tried to do what other teachers have been successful with but it wasn't working for my class. Just this Monday, we put together a paper flower in science and I used it as a independent prompt for writing. I said, "Write about your flower" and let them do whatever comes to mind. Can I share the work I got?

"I like my flower. My flower is blue. I can plant seeds. My flower have a stem. The flower have a leaf."

Ummmm, that's 5 sentences. FIVE sentences!! Can I tell you how these children came in barely knowing how to hold a pencil and write their own names?!?!!!?!?!?!!?!? I asked my stellar writer, "Who taught you how to write so well!??!" and he replied,

"I just know."

Word???????? Ummm, don't make me pull out the paper when your name was a whole bunch of wingdings!!!!! Talking bout, "I just know.."

lol

June 2009- 2nd year of teaching

school is over in EXACTLY one week.

that's 5 school days.

I can't believe it.

As of now, I'm not sad yet. Watch out for a mopey Monday post about my babies going on to 1st grade.

Awwwww! That's what I do!! I send children on to 1st grade!!! Hopefully, I've done my job and they flourish the rest of their academic careers!!!

I know my students love coming to school! Parents tell me they have to beg their children to stay home AFTER BEING DISCHARGED FROM THE HOSPITAL!!! True story, my little Dani woke up from emergency surgery and asked, "Can I go to school now?" AWWWWWWWW!! MELTED MY HEART!!!!

But yeah, this year, so different from last year. the children came in lower (see: not as bright) and as usual, I was worried I wouldn't be able to handle it. Maaaaaaan, I'm sending this class on better than the last! I worked harder this year, had a bit more swag with mine, and I have writers!! I think that is my biggest accomplishment this year... serious writers.

Anyhoo, as you may or may not have heard via tweeter, I have the best kindergarten class at school. I can't wait for next school year :-)