(I just ordered this t-shirt and plan on making it my own motto for the coming year, I'm going to surround myself with these words, it's a good reminder to focus on the REAL reason we do this, which is because we love to TEACH...wish "they" would let us do more of it!)
Wow. I think I am safe in saying that I failed at my first attempt of blogging while teaching. As you can see, my last blog post was way back in October! I can't even begin to describe the roller coaster of a year I just had. Teaching kindergarten for the first time in 10 years with 3 other "new to kindergarten" teachers, in the same year we adopted common core was more than just a challenge. We work in a title one/equity plus school which means we also had a lot of other
After 3 or 4 weeks out of school, I have had time to rest, relax, and completely clear my mind of all things related to school. I have enjoyed every single minute spent with my two kids. Jackson just turned five a month ago and Jillian is two. They are both wide open and full of sweetness and mischief I still have five full weeks left of my summer break and will spend some of that time setting up my new room, blogging, and pinning, but most of those five weeks will be spent doing more of what summer vacation is really supposed to be about!
Okay, so back to the purpose of this blog. I am moving to Third Grade. Yay! I loved kindergarten, truly! But, if you'll remember my goal is to eventually get a position outside of the classroom so before I do that I really need more experience in the "upper-grades." We had a third grade position open for next year, so I approached the principal and asked if he would consider giving it to me and he did! I taught third grade during my second and third year of teaching and LOVED it but hated the testing. Well, now (10 years later) I have learned that testing in kindergarten is just as bad or (dare I say it) maybe even worse! Do you know that when I added it up, we gave more than 400 individual assessments in the fourth quarter alone? That means 400+ times that I had to pull one student out at a time for some sort of assessment. It was beyond ridiculous. I could really get on my soapbox about the crazy amount of testing going on in K-2 and about the complete disregard for what is developmentally appropriate for students but because I would like to keep my job, I will save that tyrant for places and people outside of the social networking world! LOL
My goal for the remainder of this summer is to share some of the great things that happened in my kindergarten classroom this past year as well as all the new ideas I have (or find) for third grade. Oh...and get my new classroom set up! I will share pictures along the way. I missed all my blogging buddies and I am glad to be joining you all again!
1 comments:
Where did you find the tshirt
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