Showing posts with label first grade. Show all posts
Showing posts with label first grade. Show all posts

Tuesday, August 6, 2019

True, or NOT True. You Decide. Story #1The Teacher Reflects

The backend of my most loved career was spent teaching 32 years for LISD. There, I spent a fair amount of time as a First Grade Reading teacher. The specialized program was designed by me and funded by my school district. CHIRP (Creekside Has Individual Reading programs) helped struggling students who academically fell between the cracks; they didn't  qualify as 504, or special ed. Fondly, I remember a particular group of  cute short legged kids. After their first lesson in my class (broom closet), they returned to their peers proudly announcing, "We are reading!"
 'I can see', 'See, I can.' Certainly it wasn't a novel, but it was a beginning.

We began with mini lessons. We sang rhyming songs while doing motions to help with motor skills. I had a pink glittery wand that I touched on student's shoulders when it was their turn to talk. Those years were enjoyable, but I did finally tire of repeating the names and sounds of letters 5 times a day.

Ten successful years later, I said goodbye to that school and my little sweethearts, when I accepted a study skills position at a low socio economic middle school. Never did I learn so much.

Through the student's eyes, I saw how utterly frightened they were at the sight of a white van slowly bumping down their neighborhood street. The rest of the day was a wash, as they cried and bit their nails, wondering if their parents would be home when they got there, and if they weren't, would they ever see them again? Comparing it to my privileged childhood, my heart broke seeing their terror, uncertainty. How could anyone learn when their existence was in jeopardy?

One of the most important workshops I attended was by noted author Ruby Payne, Understanding Poverty. "Middle-class understandings of children and adults in poverty are often ill-suited for connecting with people in poverty and helping them build up resources to see rise out of poverty and into self-sufficiency." It was life changing. Being at this school with such a dedicated staff, and teaching such vulnerable students with a principal who treated us as colleagues, was certainly the high point of my career.

But nothing stays the same. We never stay in the same place. We can never go back to another. We keep moving forward.

And I found JJAEP (Juvenile Justice Alternative Education Plan) where I spent the last 11 years teaching wayward students and while wearing many hats. Half way through those years, when I was assisting in the English high school classroom, one long legged, blond headed, young teen, looked at me and asked,"Did you used to have a pink glittery wand?"

 I hadn't gone backwards. I had moved forward. But in a moment that teen looped me back to First grade when life was simpler/safer for us all.

True? Or NOT True?
Leave a comment and find out the answer next week.