Celebrate good times... come on!!

All year I have been working hard to build confidence in my students and show them that they can do hard things. Well, this week we had a huge success!! We had a writing benchmark on Thursday (a practice for the real thing in 5 weeks). Usually on benchmarks, we do not have a huge success rate. However, this time over half of the class passed!!!! I was so excited for them! It truly showed my students that they can do it. It was so great to see smiles on their face as they found out the scores instead of tears. They have been working so hard and I am very proud of them.

The past few weeks have shown me more than ever how hard my kiddos have it when they go home. I have heard so many things from my students and it brings me to tears. I could never imagine experiencing only half of the things that they do. Then, it frustrates me. (I feel as if I am going through all of the stages of grief.) Here we are teaching our hearts out and expecting kids to pass high stakes tests, when in reality we are lucky if they get to school with clean clothes and a positive attitude. I understand the importance of standardized tests, but let's take the pressure off of the kids. They have enough going on in their little minds. I am constantly telling my kids to let me stress, just do your best! When I taught kindergarten I always thought, "I refuse to be one of those teachers that teaches to the test." Well, I still refuse. I teach the strategies and we practice passages and problems. However, I feel it is also important to educate the WHOLE child and meet as many needs as I possibly can while they are at school. My goal is to teach my students to believe in themselves and know that they can achieve anything they want to.

Another proud mama moment I had this week involved our school spelling bee. When I first told me students about the spelling bee I had ZERO students that wanted to participate. In fact, one girl even said, "Spelling bees are for white people." When she said that, my blood almost started to boil. I know there is inequality in education and I see it all the time but I NEVER want my kiddos to feel and see the inequality. I wanted to show them the movie "Akila and the Bee" but the rating isn't acceptable for school. Okay, I digress.... back to my story. My students refused to participate in the spelling bee so I came up with a plan. I bribed my students but my real goal was for my students to try something new. I had 8 out of 16 students participate in the spelling bee. The whole time I was praying they would at least make it through the first round and all of them did. Furthermore, some of my kids made it even further!! The larger success in all of this is the reaction of my students. When they got a word wrong and were asked to leave the stage, they calmly walked down.... no mad faces, no screaming, no pouting, no blaming others... SUCCESS!! On top of that, as members of their school family came off the stage, they gave each other a high five. Tears were in my eyes the whole time and words could not express how proud I was.

People ask me why I became a teacher and I always have a different answer. Here are a few of them:
* to make a difference in the life of one child
* I love watching the growth that my students make in all areas: academics, emotionally, physically...
* thinking of the future my students will have
* giving my students a feeling of being loved and valued... unconditionally
* seeing the light bulb come on
* encouraging students to try something new
* watching my students become "mini-me's", especially when helping a friend.

Okay, I have written quite a bit tonight. :) I am overwhelmed by the amount of joy I have for my students and how far they have come.

And we are back...

We started back on Tuesday and I think we were all ready to come back to school. The kids have been working very hard already and I hope the motivation continues. We are very fortunate this semester to have a student teacher. She is going to be very helpful and I will have the opportunity to work on skills with students that I feel like I usually don't have time to see. I'm expecting great things this semester!