What My Year Has Looked Like So Far

As a whole, I am a pretty humble person and rarely will I compliment myself on anything. However, when it comes to teaching, I really do believe I'm one of the best there is. Especially when it comes to remediation. 

I attribute this to a couple of things:

1). I am very demanding!  I have high expectations for them and, by God, I insist they do everything possible to rise to them! It's not that I ask for what is unreasonable or unattainable for them...each child's learning expectation is different...I only ask that they stay focused and dedicated to their assigned task. 

2). I do my best to build up their self-esteem in any way possible. Especially when you're dealing with remediation, you will have students who are sad, frustrated, and feel defeated. To get them to want to learn when all they've known is disappointment, obstacles, and failures is the key to their academic success. I celebrate every achievement with them with enthusiasm and downplay their deficiencies. It's pretty easy - phrases such as, "that's okay you didn't get that one correct, look how much you have learned already this year" or "you've got this, you are smarter than you think" or "all your hard work has been worth it, look how much progress you've made" (fist bump...high five...or a raise the roof along with it). 

Anyway, I say all this because I have the privilege this year of heading the 2nd grade class that needs a little more "intensive intervention" to bring them up to grade level. There are three 2nd grades; the other two are departmentalized while mine is a self contained. Seems odd that not only do I have the class that needs the most attention and teacher support, but I also have the largest class out of the three (16 compared to 13 and 11). 

There is no question that I have a very needy class - just ask the specialist teachers who need a shot of encouragement and take a few deep breaths when they see my kids coming to their class. As a whole they are wild, talkative have very little focus, and did I mention they are needy? They are attention fiends. 

However, they have grown tremendously in the past two months and are about 70% to where I want them. Also, just in the past couple weeks, they will tell me how much they love learning. And I love that they love it.  

And they are learning far quicker and far more than I could have imagined. They already can:
- add numbers in the 10 millions
- add numbers that require regrouping
- answer two step story problems
- write answers to questions in a story using complete sentences
- identify the subject and predicate of a sentence. 
- identify the verb in the subject *which begins the predicate
- name the type of verb (action or linking) and explain why

They have exceeded  my expectations in every way.