The Beginning of Something Big

After spending months and months interviewing, wavering, preparing, moving, training and transitioning, I have finally begun teaching. This week I have officially dropped my first name for ninety percent of my day. So many people have been inquiring about how my first few days of teaching have gone. Tonight I am simply exhausted, as I will be most nights. However, I thought I would at least touch on the major points of my teaching experience thus far.

I am completely in love with my students. Most of my third graders are still quite tiny, although some are bigger (because they have been held back), and some are abnormally small (most likely because of maternal drug or alcohol use). All of them are completely lovable. And despite the extensive behavioral issues present in the classroom, all of them desperately want to be loved.

Teaching has required me to completely reexamine what motivates children and develop a great sense of ingenuity. Shameek is one of my students who frequently acts up, and it is often difficult to find the perfect words or incentive to calm him down. Today when I took away his electronic dictionary, he fled from the rest of the class and I had to chase him down the stairwell. He stood in the stairwell and repeatedly punched the brick wall. His lips were smashed together in a pout. What the hell was I supposed to do to calm him down and get him to rejoin the class? I whipped out a little trickery. After twenty minutes of uber-supportive talk, I convinced him that I would hold onto the dictionary and keep it safe until the end of the day. However, since I was really interested in seeing what it could do, I would give him words to look up for homework. If he has them done tomorrow, I will give him a special prize. He bought it, and was so excited to look up words at home. Seriously, kid. I just bribed you with homework.

Our actual class is up to 25 students, the legal cap. This is a HUGE class for the special education model we are following. It is rather ridiculous. We are running out of room for kids to sit. My co-teacher Vanessa and I began the first day by naming our tables after four boroughs in New York City: Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island. When more kids came, we had to include the fifth and final NYC borough of the Bronx. When we needed to separate one problem child from everyone else, we threw New Jersey into the picture. We now have five boroughs and a neighboring state. Classic. I’m sure there’s more to come. More students means more issues, but it also increases the potential for giving and receiving love. The exhaustion of my first day was worth it when I got hugs from my students before they left.

I have stories galore and will be introducing everyone to my students via this blog. You’ll come to love them just as much as I do… One of my most temperamental students broke my heart when I read his student survey. We asked our kids “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Others responded that they would like to be police officers or teachers or other typical kid answers. Noah simply wrote “a man.”