{Nearly} 10 Years of Blogging

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 😉.)

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.

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.

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?

Making Time

This school year has honestly been one of my best, top three perhaps (knocking on wood!), and yet I've found it hard to stop, pause, reflect, and write about what has been going on in my classroom. Why?  I'm not entirely sure. I think a lot has to do with giving myself the time.  In this "New Year Season" I've been seeing a lot of memes, posts, and reminders to take time -- really, to make time -- for yourself, especially as a teacher. Most of these seem to be geared toward working out, which I should also do more of, but I've realized that part of the reason I hesitate at the end of the day to sit down and write about my day, and the adventures I've had with my kiddos, is that it means slowing down. The words don't always come quickly and easily, it's messy, and takes time! 

It's so much easier to just keep going, to create the next lesson, to plan the next activity, to write the next assessment. This work, for me, is easier -- and feels more "practice," "purposeful," and "necessary." But of course, as I recognize every time I sit down to write (or work out for that matter), it's just as important, if not more. And feels great -- once I do it. 

After a quick look through previous posts, I've written this same message (i.e. "haven't blogged in awhile, will write more now, blah, blah") at least three times in the past, but here we go again. 

And maybe I'll work out at some point too. 😉

Catching Up

When I started this blog, I'd only been teaching for a few years and I wanted a way to capture the things that were working well for me and and reflect on the things that were not. I thought the blog would be a place I to keep my immediate thoughts on the day's events and record my classroom activities in nearly real-time.

That turned out to be harder than I'd thought.  After a rough day, I didn't always feel like writing down what had happened and reflecting about why.  Even after great days, I just wanted to bask in the glory of my own productivity, rather than write it all down. Of course, as one could have predicted, I now regret that I didn't keep more in-the-moment recollections of our daily goings-on.

Fortunately, though, I did take lots of pictures, lots and lots of pictures. So, since it's now summer and I have some extra time on my hands, I'm going back through my albums of photos to recall the best (and maybe some worst) moments over the past couple of months (okay, years).

More posts coming soon...