I started my first teaching position in the 1995-96 school year. I taught third grade in a new town where I did not live and where I knew absolutely no one. It was about a thirty-five minute drive from my house. I had just graduated from college, and I was absolutely thrilled. I could not get into my classroom until the beginning of August, so I worked feverishly for about three weeks to get my room just perfect. I decorated and placed everything just right. I wanted my room to be warm and inviting. I had a reading corner decorated with a beach theme, including beach chairs and a fishing net with Christmas lights and books stuck in it. I really thought that was spectacular. I hung fishing wire from the ceiling and put clothes pins on the bottom to clip on student work so that even the ceiling would be decorated. Then I had to make sure that I had the proper teacher attire so that I would look the part. In the 90s, teachers were still easily identifiable by their couture. I had to have a denim jumper, white Keds, seasonal button covers, shirts with apples on them, and plenty of crew neck sweatshirts with apples and books on them that I could wear with khaki pants (and my white Keds). I worked on all of this right up until a day or so before the students were set to arrive. That’s when I realized that I had better figure out what to actually TEACH them. Since I was going to have them in my room for about seven hours. Five days a week. That’s when life became very real for me.
Life should have been real for me by that time. I was twenty-five years old. No, I had not been held back in school. I had not been able to make up my mind on a major in college. Many students who major in education have wanted to be teachers since they were very young. Not me. I left high school thinking my major was broadcast journalism. I was going to be a news anchor on the nightly news. When I tell this to my children, they both find it hilarious. Emily thinks that I simply do not have the fashion sense to ever make it on TV. She thinks that perhaps I could be on a commercial for the Jitterbug flip phone for seniors, but that would be it. Matthew is certain that I was born a teacher. He probably envisions me as a toddler, walking around my house in a little cardigan and slacks, holding a gradebook and talking in a teacher voice while gnawing on teething wafers. Perhaps they are right, because I changed my mind before I took one journalism class. I also fancied interior design for a while. But then I realized that I really only liked the styles that I liked and I thought everything else was butt ugly. The chances that every client I encountered would have exactly the same taste as me seemed slight. I would not be in very high demand. Psychology? That one looked very promising. I did like the classes. But it was depressing. There was something wrong with everyone. It was too heavy for me. I was running out of options. That’s how I ended up at education. I took the only things I was really good at, helping people and going to school, and I put them together. The final result was to become a teacher.
In some ways, my first year of teaching was my best work. In other ways, I am profoundly sorry for the crappy job I did. Let’s start with the good. At that time, I was unmarried and had no children. So, I gave my class all my time. I arrived at school an hour early and stayed an hour late every single day. I also worked on school work all day Sunday, usually driving back to school to do that work. The building principal was new that year and she was big on hanging student work in the halls and in your room. I changed out the hall and my room with new work every single week. And I had work all around my entryway and down the hall in two directions. I must have gone through a million staples. It wasn’t just stapled up, either. It all had a theme and I had anchor charts and all kinds of stuff to go with it. I am exhausted thinking about it now. But my kids LOVED it. I did it on Sundays and they would come in on Mondays and they would be so excited to see what our hallway looked like. They thought we had the coolest hallway in the whole school. They all couldn’t wait to find where their work was. They would even want to bring their parents in to show them their work pieces every week. (Yes. The other teachers absolutely hated me for this. I don’t blame them.)
I also spent every Friday eating lunch with a student. I went down the alphabet and they took turns. Every Friday, that student and I would bring our lunches into the classroom and eat together and just talk. I would bring a special dessert. I learned so much about my students. It has been 26 years and I can still picture many of them sitting at that table in the corner of the room, telling me about their lives. Those are memories I will treasure forever!
I taught every subject, including handwriting, science, AND social studies, every single day and rarely did I ever leave anything out. I jam packed more into a day than is really possible. We did not stop for air. I had almost no discipline problems, though. We simply did not have time. Looking back, I wonder if I even let them have a bathroom break? I guess I did. I don’t remember any accidents.
I remember almost every student from that class. I can remember their names. I can remember what they looked like. I can remember where their desks were located. I can remember funny little things about them. I can remember reading to them in the afternoons, with all of them gathered around me on the carpet. I can remember walking them to the buses at the end of the day. When I left that school at the end of that year, I went to a different district and a different grade level. When you spend multiple years at a grade level, the years tend to run together. This one year at third grade was special, because it stood alone.
And while I did some things that I wish I had continued to do the rest of my teaching career, there are some things that I still cringe over. The first obvious one is not working on lesson planning until the day or so before school started. When I did remember that I had been hired to teach and not decorate, I went to my fellow grade level teachers and asked them what their plans were for the first week or so. They all suggested that I open my textbooks and start with the first chapters and start teaching whatever was in there. Okay. I could do that. I took all of my teacher’s manuals home and got to work. I read those manuals word by word. I made notes and I highlighted. I did exactly what they told me to do. I did that for math, science, social studies, and reading. The reading basal manual also had some writing and spelling stuff in it, so I used that, too. And just in case that wasn’t enough, I went to the teacher’s supply store and bought extra third grade teacher books. My students were doing enough papers to fill their backpacks every night. (I apologize to all of those students. I am certain they all have issues with back pain now because of their heavy backbacks.)
I was not the world’s worst teacher, so I did realize that eight year olds could not learn from worksheets alone. I did work in some engaging activities. Not enough, but some. I even allowed some partner work. But what was starting to become very clear to me by about October was that my students were learning the math, and the science, and the social studies, but they could not always demonstrate that learning through writing. They could answer questions I asked orally, but they could not write the answers to questions they had to read. These students also did poorly on the big unit reading exams that came with our reading series, but would do okay on the little skills worksheets that we did along the way. I saw all of this, but I did not know what to do. I knew the problem had to stem from an issue with reading and/or writing, but all I knew to do was teach it the way the book told me to, and I was doing that.
Looking back, I have a couple of ideas for how I was able to get so much covered in a day. One, I did everything whole group. I never heard about small groups when I was in college. That was not a “thing” back then. Once in a while, I would call an individual back to my desk for extra help. But I never took a small group of students to a table to work on a skill. That would have made such a difference with that group! But it never even crossed my mind. I also never spent any time reteaching. If I gave an assignment and some students did poorly, I would mark on it that it needed to be redone at home! I am mortified now that I did that. Clearly they did poorly due to a lack of understanding. It was my job to address that and build up their understanding. Not the parents. No wonder I could whiz through the material.
My writing instruction was horrible. Non-existent really. I would give the students a prompt or a scenario and tell them to write. Sometimes I would remind them about things like capitals and punctuation. Then I would play soft music and grade papers while they wrote. I never modeled one thing. We didn’t have peer revision. We didn’t have conferences. I rarely used rubrics. I didn’t have anchor papers. I didn’t even know what most of these things were. It was an abomination. I am so sorry.
The good news about all of the bad teaching I did my first year is that I did learn from it. The very next year, I enrolled in graduate school. It was abundantly clear to me that I did not know how to teach students to read or write. I went on to get my K-12 reading certification. Every year after that first year, I got a little bit better at helping students learn to read and write. I am still learning.
And from that first year, I learned that you will never regret time spent with students. I was never again able to devote that much time to school. But I also never had a group of students with whom I held such a special bond. I will never have another classroom full of little faces. But if I did, I would spend more time building relationships with them and less time worrying about everything else. My third graders would have done pretty much anything for me. And I was not a skilled teacher by any stretch of the imagination. They just knew I loved them and I was there for them. Everything else just worked its way out.
I think some of you need to hear that this year. You may need to fine-tune your craft. It is very important. But perhaps the MOST important thing is the relationships you build with your students, especially this year.
