Book Frontiers

Well, now I know one thing that the new school year brought – busy teacher syndrome!  While I am greatly enjoying my (newish) teaching duties this year as a homeroom and language arts teacher for our fifth-graders, I am often overcome by a sense that I will never feel completely ready, never be truly organized, never be totally prepared. 

What is interesting is that I’m finally okay with that.  I am at heart an extremely logical, prepared, focused person.  I went into this school year with the whole year mapped out, week by week for the entire year.  Guess what happened?  (Experienced elementary teachers are already snickering…)  I had to remake my plans.  And then I had to remake them again.  One of the books I chose to have my class read was really difficult for them.  Sure, I had fabulous lessons all worked out, that they would be integrating computer learning with reading the text.  But instead, I had to let some of the bells and whistles slide by while I explained what was going on in the novel.  I had planned to have my students taking photos and writing on a class blog on a weekly basis.  Guess what?  Once we got into serious reading, we suddenly had very little time to work on the blog.  My students preferred using their “quiet time” for drawing comics rather than blogging.  I may work to go back and integrate the two, but for right now the blog is on hiatus.

I am still generally following my grand scheme for the year, but I have re-learned one of the most important teaching skills -- to teach the students you actually have as opposed to the ones you were expecting.  While this school year has been keeping me juggling many issues, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Image from:  http://www.aasd.k12.wi.us/staff/boldtkatherine/images/animated-teacher.gif