There are a couple of things that I have learned about teaching over the last five years. First, most of what you learn about teaching doesn't come from college classes...it comes from on the job experience. Second, a teacher's work is NEVER done. Third, a teacher plays
many roles each day. And finally, and quite possibly the most important,
the kids will never forget the silly mistakes you make.
Case in point: During Writer's Workshop, we are working on our essay unit created by Lucy Calkins. (I'll get to her in a minute). As I was modeling how to develop ideas, I wrote my name on the board and had the kids come up with three things about me that they could write about. Here is what they came up with:
1. When a humongous spider crawled out of my bag; I screamed and went running to get someone to kill it.
2. When my computer had a run-in with a semi-open gatorade bottle.
3. When I forgot to put our egg in our contraption for our egg-drop experiment.
Forget reading, writing, science, social studies and math...what my kids will remember about me is that I make mistakes...and that they were pretty funny. In actuality, isn't that what teaching is all about? Something to ponder.
3rd graders don't miss a beat, and that's what I love about them.
Back to Lucy Calkins. I love this woman. She knows everything about reading and writing. I don't have a single child in my class who is a reluctant writer. They all like to write. Maybe that's because of my enthusiasm, but my excitement stems from the fact that "I love Lucy."
I don't have a resource to share that is relevant to this post. However, I have tagged some many awesome sites on my
delicious account.
5 weeks left. Pretty unbelievable. Have a good week!
