I started this blog nearly
10 years ago. I can't believe I'm even putting that number into writing! It truly feels like an eternity ago. When I started blogging, I wanted to be able to share some of the things I was doing in my classroom with other teachers, and I wanted to capture my own in-the-moment feelings about teaching, the projects I was doing with my students, and the turns I was taking in my career. As it turns out, those last few things have been far more important than sharing anything (especially since my mom is still my primary reader 😉.)
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| Pre-K Math |
I ran into a former colleague at a party a couple of weeks ago, and as we were catching up I shared that I now teach fourth grade. She was shocked! She remembered me as the quintessential Pre-K teacher and said she couldn't really picture me working with older students. It was a funny, and gratifying, feeling to know that I still held this place in her mind, but it made me realize how far I've moved on from that role in the past few years.
I remember a moment last year (which, unfortunately, I didn't sit down to blog about at the time) when I realized that I felt completely "at home" in the role of fourth-grade teacher. I had stumbled into fourth grade, but it actually seemed the like the perfect fit for me in a lot of ways. I loved my own fourth grade teacher (although truthfully I don't remember very many specifics about her except that I loved her read-alouds and she gave me my own copy of
The Giver, which was my favorite book for years to come). I had also loved working in a fourth grade classroom during a high school teaching internship.
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| 4th Grade Math Activity |
Teaching math was also an unlikely position for someone who never considered herself very good at math, but, again, it kind of made sense. For most of my own eduction, math felt to me like a secret code that I couldn't crack. Yet, I think my personal struggles to memorize rules and recognize patterns made me a more empathetic teacher of math. Never feeling like a "math person" made me appreciate the value of teaching math in different ways for different kiddos. And I do remember solving endless long-division problems in fifth grade after I'd learned to follow the algorithm, because it felt like magic! As a math teacher, I live for those "aha!" moments with my students.
As I sat down to try to write something today, I decided to look back through some of my previous posts. Wow! As much as I've held on to the image of myself as an early childhood teacher, I barely remember being the person who wrote some of these words. I've been thinking for a little while about how much I miss working with little guys and these posts brought that home. I miss planning hands-on centers and field experiences to the market. I miss designing writing units, breaking down mentor texts, and incorporating social-emotional learning into nearly every lesson -- none of which feels as possible in fourth grade with the expectations of our curricula, testing, scheduling, and departmentalization.
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My favorite 1st grade math game:
Roll and Record! |
Now most of the students and families at my school don't know me as anything
but a fourth grade teacher. As much as the "fourth grade math teacher" role fits me, part of me is still the teacher who puts on puppet shows and sings songs to bring kids to the carpet. I know there are some teachers who are content to teach one or two grade levels for their entire career, but I just don't think I'm destined to be one of them. After four years of Pre-K, I remember knowing it was the right time to move on. I felt the same way after teaching first grade for four years. This is my fifth (technically fourth and a half) year in fourth grade and I'm wondering if it's time to try something new once again. What that will be, who knows?
