How Am I Going to Make This the Best Year Ever?

These 17 students taught me with the power of relationships,
and how a bunch of kids and a 22 year old can become a family.

I'll never forget my first day as a legitimate, certified teacher. I was hired in a K-8 middle school, and was the 'bubble' section of a rather large third grade. I remember walking into my blank slate of a classroom and feeling elated. All of the learning I was about to bestow would happen in this room. Mind you the classroom had a roomful of windows right outside the hallway that led to the café. So, every single student and teacher would watch me teach every moment. Life in a fishbowl - no worries there - I would later find that life in a fishbowl was pretty normal in a one district community.

I spent days preparing for the arrival of my 17students (yes-17!). I had taken all the classes - management, literacy, math, assessment - and was ready for what was to happen. The first day arrived. In my blue shirt, khaki pants, and striped tie, I was ready to welcome my first and dearest family. What I wasn't ready for were the tears, crying, and all out desperation. The previous teacher (for whom I took over in the bubble) had left and the students found a young man teacher and not the female teacher they were expecting. Their classroom had moved and was in the midst of the eighth grade hallway. You could say that the first moments of third grade was a scary time for us all. I didn't have a class on what to do if your kids cried because you weren't the teacher they thought they would have.

All of the ideas I had planned suddenly were out the window for the first day. I picked up a stack of books and I read. I read. I read. I read. We had community circle, read some more, learned about each of the students, and complimented them all -- from the dress one girl was wearing to the glasses of another boy. I spent the entire day reading books and playing games. I couldn't tell you what happened on day two or three. I can just tell you what I felt. I wanted my students to feel safe and secure.

I wanted them to trust me as their teacher. I wanted them to be grow into the best learners imaginable that year. As I reflect back, I don't remember when and how I taught the standards (they were taught per my lesson book showed). I couldn't tell you what reading skills we taught. Nor could I tell you how cursive went (we did teach it). I know my students learned skills in math and reading. But, what I believe they learned most of all was how to care for one another. How to support one another. How to love one another. That all started with a stack of books and a commitment I made to them that we would have the best year ever. Every day in my plan book was, "How am I going to make this the best year ever? Then, I worked to make it happen.