Goals

Our school is really big on setting goals with our students. We have students review their data from each DEA test and set a reading and math goal that will push them forward academically. I am not sure about the academic impact related specifically to their chosen goals, but I have been very pleased with the level of additional investment I have seen with my students who latch on to their goals.

Right now we are 3 weeks away from state testing and as much as it pains me to admit we are in full TCAP review mode. All day. Every day. We have 30 skills to review (15 reading, 15 math) in the 15 days leading up to TCAP. It is pure madness, but my kids are really stepping up their game. All of us are exhausted, but they are pushing through!

Here is an example of our tracker for test review. Students earn a sticker for showing mastery of each skill. The can decorate outside of their tower for showing their best effort (doing optional practice packets, attending tutoring, etc.)

It is really easy to get caught up in the little things---especially this time of year. Fortunately I had a moment that helped to ground me a little bit.

Yesterday one of my hardest working students randomly stopped me in the hallway before lunch and looked at me and asked, "Miss Prinzo, Do you think I care about my goals?"

I am not doing this moment justice, but these are the moments that make my job worth it.

Overheard in the Hallway

This past year I switched from teaching 1st grade to teaching 3rd grade. About 90% of the time I love the switch, but every once in a while I miss the really little ones. Fortunately I am still in the building with them and I get treated to little moments like this...

Two kindergartners were walking back to their classroom from the library. The little girl was quite a few feet ahead of the boy. She stops, looks at him, and says, "Come on, we need to go."

The boy looks at her and says, "Hold on. I just need a little bit of time. I just need a little bit of time with my dragon. I just need to be with my dragon."

You have to respect a man who knows what he needs!

February Challenge Post 2: Animal Racism

My kids are LOVING black history month and I am LOVING teaching about it. We have been studying black history month mostly through literature. This means more read alouds! My kids have started to  ask more questions about slavery and segregation. Here is an awesome one from today...

"Miss Prinzo, Are animals racist?"

You have to love inquiring minds.

February Challenge Post 1: What does a day in my life look like?

Instead of creating a New Year's Resolution this year I decided to take on a series of 30 day challenges. My January challenge was to get healthy by eating better and exercising more. I didn't actually exercise and eat perfectly for 30 days, but I did make a conscious effort to make healthy living an important part of my life again. I am to the point that I am ready for my 2nd 30 day challenge. I want to get back into the habit of blogging again. 

My goal is to write at least 30 posts between now and March 4. I have a list of about 15 professional posts I want to write, and then the rest will be stories and reflections about teaching. During these 30 posts I am going to ask the grammar-fairy for forgiveness in advance. My goal is to get the words out fast, make writing a habit, and not get caught up in editing along the way.

So here we go, post 1...

What does a school day look like?

A lot of people have asked me about what a typical day looks like. This question comes up the most when people ask how/ why I spend so much time working. I am going to attempt to outline my day for you..

5:30- Hit the snooze button.
5:35-Hit the snooze button.
5:40-Hit the snooze button.
5:45-Hit the snooze button.
5:50- Drag myself out of bed, get dressed, make lunch, pack up
6:20- Head to school.
6:30- Monday morning treat...Krispy Kreme! Doughnuts and coffee were a much needed morning treat.
6:45- Arrive at school and realize I forgot to turn the heat on in my classroom. Check my email, update my objectives board, clean my desk a little
6:55- Head to the work room to copy guided reading materials, make a copy order
7:30- Organize papers and materials needed for the day, open guided powerpoints, project/ pass out morning work.
7:45- bell rings, morning frenzy (greet students, check folders, help students with previous nights homework, check/ help edit Royal Friendship letters)
8:00- Announcements
8:15- Clean up math centers, begin morning math block
9:05- planning, yes! More copies, explain needs to parent volunteer in English and  broken Spanish, copy materials for Tuesday reading content lesson (yay differentiation), verify gradebook, holy shi** planning is over already?
10:05- pick up students from specials, find out one student threw up and need to call home
10:10- switch with teacher across the hall for differentiated word study. 3 groups, 3 sort introductions, 3 tests (still can't get ahold of sick student's mom...try dad. Dad speaks very little English....tells me to call mom...)
10:40- Morning meeting, Taboo game (post about Taboo )
10:50- Make up reading assessment from Snow day; read to low ELs
11:30- Extra time??? Start Social Studies early. Read-aloud of an African American Folk tale.
12:00- Stamina reading time for student; pull Exceptional Ed student to work on reading.
12:20- Indoor recess..."pay" 5 kids in Cubs Cash as helpers, monitor students, explain that people can be friends even if they do not always play together.
12:35- restroom break
12:41- lunch; eat with table winners
1:11- pick up students, restroom break
1:15- afternoon math block
2:00- Social Studies block (yes! I actually got to Social Studies today!)
2:40- pack up and dismissal
3:05- Say goodbye to last student and check email
3:15- Regie Routman professional development (oops...totally forgot to prepare for this one...)
4:30-5:30-bitch about Regie with a co-worker,collect/organize work turned in today (7 different assignments)
5:30-5:45- pack up/ quick clean up
6:10-7:30- cheer on Lead Academy girls basketball (My roommate coaches...it is their last homegame)
7:45- get home, make dinner, eat, chat with roommates,
9:00-10:15- grade math test given today, they HAVE to be graded tonight so I can do test corrections tomorrow. Finish my wine and decide that the stack of 6 other assignments will have to go on the "to do list" for tomorrow (or let's be honest sometime in the next week...)
10:15- decide my shower can wait, get in bed, check email, respond to a few emails, realize that my self-blogging challenge is already 4 days behind schedule.
11:`5 finish blog post, set alarm, get ready to start all over again.

And there you have it, my day outlined. It is kind of crazy how much more aware of time I am since I started teaching. It is almost obsessive, but 100% necessary. My days during the week are super routine, but thanks to my students, can be totally different. I easily make over 1000 decisions each day and finish each day feeling like I have just finished spinning in circles as fast as I can. I usually add more to my "to do list" than take things off.  Some days I love it, and some days I hate it. Love it, or hate it, I  am grateful for the experience. I am grateful to get to live with my wonderful roomates. I am grateful to have an amazing teaching trio. More than anything, I am grateful for the opportunity to teach and learn with my students. 16 hours, 1000 decisions, and a glass of wine later, I am choosing to be grateful. Good night!

Dinosaurs

A quick story that happened on Friday:

We have this behavior management system at school called PBS (Positive Behavior Support) that centers around recognizing students who are doing the right thing rather than focusing on the students who are misbehaving. I am not completely bought into it, but it seems to work for most of my kids. Part of the system is that we reward students with “Cubs Cash” that they can trade in for prizes, special privileges, etc.  On Friday’s I have a Cub’s Cash store that students can “buy” from with Cub’s Cash.  Well one of my students, A, had apparently been saving his Cubs Cash (80 tickets!) and wanted to buy two toy dinosaurs.

To give you a little background on A, he is one of my sweetest, most eager, yet academically lowest students. He is a refugee from Thailand. His mom left A’s older brother and dad in Thailand to bring  A and his little brother here. They came here with absolutely nothing. Mom understands no English and now that their transition aid is running out, it is clear that they are barely making ends meet. To make matters worse, I recently learned that A had Malaria when he was about 5 years old. The medical care they had in Thailand through the clinic was very poor and he had it on and off for a year. Mom told us that she had to completely re-train A to eat, walk, go to the restroom, everything. We suspect that he has some developmental delays and language acquisition issues as a result of his Malaria left untreated for so long.  

Anyway, I told him that he could only buy one thing, which has always been the store rule. Instead of buying one of the dinosaurs he just kind of walked away with his head down. I wasn’t really paying attention, but when I caught up with what had happened I asked him why he didn’t just buy one dinosaur.  He told me (in a lot less words…he has very little English) that he was saving so he and his little brother could play together. I am not even kidding you; it took everything that I had not to burst into tears.  (And yes, I let him buy both dinosaurs). 

Most kids his age would never have even considered buying something for a sibling. To make the story even more special, I had a few students in the room who witnessed it. Another student, S, asked me why I let him get two things. When I explained to her and the students that were there what it meant to be a refugee, and that A doesn't have toys at home like most kids; they just nodded their heads and moved on. 

Times like these are the reason that I really like working with my population of students. They have so much more empathy and understanding of each other’s challenges than other kids their age (I am sure more than I did myself).  It is hard to explain, but they really just “get it.” There are some things you can try to teach, but I don’t think I could ever teach the type of empathy, support, and compassion that my students have for each other. It truly is amazing.

Jancing

My students invented a new vocabulary word today.

Jancing: the act of dancing and jumping.

Jancing is what happens when you try to say dancing and jumping and one word comes out.

Imagine 8 3rd grades breaking out into a 3 minute jance party.

Happy Friday

One woman

Every Friday I eat lunch with my table winners. I usually get them settled and then take a minute or two to get myself settled and prepped for math before joining my students. Today I had the pleasure of overhearing the following comment...

D: "I wish there was only one women in the world."

(In my head) "Sweetheart that will all change in a couple of years.."

D: "Yeah, then we could all just date her."

(me) hiding my laughter with a coughing fit.

Reasons I don't like missing school...

1. Incompetent substitutes who cannot find the lesson plans for the day. Yes, the lesson plans that are in the binder marked "Subsitute Binder" in the first section that says LESSON PLANS with today's date highlighted on the very top of the page.

Maybe the binder was hidden? NOPE it was sitting on the top of my desk in the tub marked "SUB TUB" in huge letters. The substitute folder from the office also has "see substitute binder" written on it in at least 10 places.

Under the binder was every single thing the sub would need in order of the day (with the instructions AND an exemplar for each activity.)


Rant over. Thanks for letting me vent. Good night.

"Why don't you just sleep here?"

Today I was teaching a vocabulary lesson and we were talking about the word echo. One of my students mentioned that the hallways can echo when they are empty. To affirm this students' question, I told a quick story about how I was the only teacher in the hall this weekend and I dropped my books. The noise echoed. Moving on? Not a chance. One of my students asks,

"Miss Prinzo, why don't you just sleep here?"

Maybe I need to make an effort to be at home more...

Hot Cheetos

Hot Cheetos... add them to the list of weird kid things I don't understand. They can go right after folded paper squares. Seriously, why do kids want these bright red, spicy, worm looking things? 

On Fridays I eat lunch with my table winners. Do you know what we talked about for over half the lunch? You guessed it...Hot Cheetos. One of my students in particular is a Hot Cheetos connoisseur. On Friday he put Hot Cheetos on his hamburger and then bet the other students at the table that he could eat the whole bag without drinking milk. The other students at the table were amazed. I guess I know what I need to do to win my students over... 

In all seriousness, every student has that thing they need to break the ice. This particular student has had two non-academic conversations with me this entire year. Both conversations were about Hot Cheetos. He is a student that kind of gets lost in the shuffle, and I am glad to have something to talk with him about. It is hard to find time in the day to really get to know students, but it is totally worth it. The rest of the day on Friday, this student participated twice as much as usual, and to think, it was all because of some Hot Cheetos.

We are Diverse Learners

One of the things I am most excited about this year is the diversity among my students. For those of you who do not know, the majority of my students are English Learners or bilingual. Students in my classroom speak 6 languages and come from about 10 different countries and/or other regions of the United States.  By the statistics alone, we are a diverse group of learners. My students LOVE to share their cultures with each other. I am pretty sure I hear the words, "In my country..." at least 15 times a day. 3rd grade is a really great age to share about cultural diversity because many of my students are old enough to remember moving to the  US and/ or remembering trips they have taken to their home country, and can share their experiences with each other. Most of them also speak/ understand enough English to discuss and ask questions to each other. They are also not old enough to have developed some of the strain between ethnic groups that seems to come in during the middle school years. (Although, hopefully our diversity discussions will help prevent some of these later strains).

Right now we are writing cultural narratives. My students have been drafting short paragraphs (4-6 sentences) on the different aspects of their culture: language, clothing, holidays/ traditions, and food.  They many choose to write about the country that they came from exclusively or write about how their family has blended their native culture with American culture. Right now we are in the revising stage, but hopefully in the next two weeks, we will be able to type and publish our writing. Then it is all about the sharing. I am in love with this project! I have been learning so much about my students. There are so many little things that I have learned that have helped me to better understand my students. For example, I realized that a few of my students take part in fasting during Ramadan.

This past weekend I was invited over for lunch by one of my students. His mother works in our school cafeteria and treated two other teachers and me to a traditional Kurdish meal. It was delicious! It was also quite the cultural experience. Their family traditionally eats together on the floor. Our hosts were extremely concerned that this would bother us and kept saying that we could go eat at the table (FYI..the table was their coffee table). After lunch we were treated to Kurdish black tea (with a TON of sugar!) and pastries. There were also figs and a few other fruity/ nutty looking things that I was not brave enough to try. We did have one slight cultural mishap when we used ashtrays/ nut casing collectors as dessert plates. We also learned a little bit about how the family came to the US and about their families that were still in Iraq. Our host was also telling us that adult children, women in particular, typically stay a part of a household until marriage. It made the three of us, who are all single, under 25 and living on our own, chuckle when she told us about her friend who is so frustrated because she  has children between 22 and 25 at home who just cannot find the "one." Lunch was definitely an interesting experience. I really enjoyed it, but I have to admit that I was much more comfortable being alongside two of my colleagues. There were a lot of gaps in conversation and periods of uncertainty that were made much easier with other English-speakers!

The Tennessean also had an interesting opinion piece on the diversity/ history of immigration to our region. I really enjoy learning about the history and benefits of our diverse community. Here is the article: http://www.tennessean.com/article/20120907/OPINION03/309070052/Local-diversity-model-all

You Have the Best Clothes

" Miss Prinzo, you have the best clothes. My mom is jealous of them."

Fact: I have never met this student's mom.

Fake Mistakes

Today we were working on drafting our family paragraphs. At the beginning of the lesson I drafted an example paragraph with my students. As always, I made a few mistakes. One of my students caught a lot of them, but I told him not to worry I would fix them later during editing. Later we went back to our seats and he asked me, "So we are supposed to spell things wrong on purpose?" Needless to say, he made my day :)

Running in the Hall

Today we were in the hallway and one of the first grade teachers jogged by my class. As she walked by she told the kids jokingly, "You don't see me running in the hallway!"

My kids were fascinated. Of course, they had to know...Are teachers REALLY allowed to run in the hallway? I said yes and one of my students blurted out:

"I want to be a teacher so I can run in the hallway!"

Forget about touching students' lives or instilling a love of learning. The next time someone asks me why I wanted to be a teacher I am going to say that I wanted to be able to run in the hallway.

Morning Meeting

I LOVE morning meeting. It is by far one my favorite part of the day. I love it; the kids love it; and I rarely have behavior problems. Morning Meeting is WAY more fun with 3rd graders. We actually get to do all four parts just about every day. For those of you who are unfamiliar, morning meeting has 4 parts:

Greeting

Share

Message

Activity

I pick a new greeting to share with my students every week. Last we did handshakes (hello important real world skill) and this week we are working on high fives. I will give you one guess about which one the kids like more. For the rest of this quarter my plan is to introduce a new greeting each week. As we learn them they will be put into a jar. After the first 9 weeks we will draw out of the jar for the greeting. I am also really looking forward to having my students teach us greetings in their native languages. My classroom has 6 different languages (not including English) spoken and the kids love to share about their native language.

The share can be anything. So far this year we have done class graphs, shared our starring me posters, read journal entries, and learned about our royal friend. I try to do at least one thing each week in which everyone shares, but on most days 3-5 students share and we celebrate their work with 3 claps or 2 snaps. Shares are usually voluntary/ by sign up and I make sure to tell my students in advance who will be sharing so those students can prepare. 

The message is a short letter to the students that I write each morning. I generally use it to go over the day's standards and schedule changes, visitors, etc. I am hoping to do some activities later in the year, but for now it is a quick way to give everyone a run-down of the day and practice some reading fluency. I also take questions about the day right after the message. 

The activity is some sort of game or small group activity. For example, today we were zookeepers who needed to compare the weight of the different animals we have at the zoo. I put the students into 5 groups of about 3-4 students and they sorted the animals by weight from least to greatest. I love tricking them into doing a little more math or reading! If you are a teacher interested in these cards you can download them here.

My favorite morning meeting moment of this week: "YOU like rollercoasters? Teachers don't like roller coasters!"

Intimidated

1 real week down and I am still loving my 3rd graders. Things are settling down and I am about finished with teaching routines and procedures. I am excited to get to teaching actual content, but I am also admittedly terrified. One of the biggest changes I have observed from switching grade levels is that the achievement gap is so much bigger.

I thought the gap was big with my first graders. I really did. 3rd grade is a whole new ball game. The reality is that some of my 3rd graders are below the level of my first graders from last year. I can compare my first graders from student teaching in a high-performing school to my 3rd graders, and the middle-low of my first grade class would outperform all, but a handful of my 3rd graders. It is scary.

We did a lot of diagnostic testing this week and I have identified our two biggest obstacles for this upcoming year...writing and math. I identified these target areas earlier this week, but I did not grade the diagnostic tests until today. The actual scores made the challenge we have ahead of us so much more real.

The chart below is a crop of my writing and math tracker. The top bold score is where TFA expects my students to be at this point in the year. This benchmark assumes that my students will need to make 1.6 years of growth to be on grade level. The second row is my class average.

I know writing does not look that much lower, but students are expected to average a 5 out of 6 points by the end of the year. As I was grading their diagnostic tests, I did not have a student get a score of more than 4 in ANY of the 7 rubric categories. Many of my students cannot form a complete sentence. 

The math diagnostic speaks for itself. The math diagnostic we give is based on the second grade standards. Our kids are going to have to make extraordinary gains to be on grade level. Our pacing guide has us teaching pretty much all of the 2nd grade prerequisite skills in the next 2 weeks. My roommate/ partner teacher (convenient, right?) has similar data in her classroom and we are working together to decide if we should extend our first unit to ensure mastery or move on so we have a chance of teaching the big 3rd grade skills to mastery. It is quite the balancing act.

Right now I am intimidated by my data. Not discouraged, but intimidated. Right now my most pressing challenge is how to present this data to my students and families in a way that will inspire hard work and best effort. The gap, of course, is the reason I joined TFA. I wanted to understand it. I wanted to be a part of the solution. I guess you get what you wish for. 

And finally, in an effort to "lighten the mood" I got a friend request from one of my summer school students this week. I am sure you would be shocked when I tell you that I politely declined her request with, "I would be happy to be your FB friend when you graduate from high school."

Learning and Implementing School Wide PBS

This year my school has mandated that we move to a school wide PBS (positive behavior support) system. I really like the concept behind PBS, but admittedly I do have some reservations. There is a lot that goes into PBS and it has been challenging to implement a system that I am not yet fully trained on. So far I have introduced our school wide expectations (Be responsible, Be respectful, and Give your best effort), school-wide procedures and reward system. I am seeing good results with my students, and would probably see better results if I could remember to keep blue tickets with me.

Here is how I introduced the system to my students:

I started the discussion by talking about why we have rules and expectations (We have rules and expectations so everyone at our school can do their best learning). Then we did a group brainstorm about rules and expectations the students already knew. 

I then told the students that this year at our school there were three words, called expectations, that would help up us all do our best learning. Everyone, including teachers, will be working this year to meet these expectations. 

I introduced the the words responsible, respectful,and best effort. Then I gave a simple, kid friendly definition of each of them. I put up a synonymous word or phrase to help students remember the difference between the words (see below). 

Next we did a sort of procedures that would help make sure we are being responsible, respectful, and giving our best effort everywhere in the school. I modeled with classroom rules and then the students were broken up into groups to do sorts for the other areas of the school (bus, playground, cafeteria, restroom, arrival/ dismissal). 

After students presented their sorts to the class, I put the sorts up on a bulletin board under our key words (expectations). 

To end the lesson I had the students create a tri-fold and give an example of how they can show each expectation. 

Throughout this upcoming week I will be doing a series of character building activities and read alouds. At some point in each activity we will come back to our key expectations and talk about how our we (or the characters in our books) are/ are not demonstrating our expectations. I am looking forward to some great discussion with my students!

Welcome to OUR Classroom!

The kids are here and I am officially making the transition from "my classroom" to "our classroom." I worked really hard to make our classroom student friendly. The only place in our room that is off limits to my students is behind my desk. The front and side of my desk will be shared with my students. The front of my desk plays host to our classroom shout out board and the top of my desk hosts pencils, tape, staplers and hole punches.  I have a ton of storage space and I am planning on labeling all of my cabinets so that my students will have easy access to what they need. One of the things I am already loving about my third graders in their level of independence. It has been really easy to teach them procedures so far b/c they have so much more school experience than my first graders did.

Here is a quick tour of my classroom:

View from my door. I have decided to do tables this year to maximize opportunities to practice English for my students. The white tubs are temporary. I put some books in them for the first day because I have not yet taught library procedures. On that note, check out my BEAUTIFUL library. I added 8 new boxes for chapter books and an additional box of Social Studies books for this upcoming year!

Back of the room: You are looking at my lockers, student mailboxes, homework board, milk crate shelves (holding tracking binders), guided reading table, and community supplies. The back cabinets are dedicated to CAFE and will eventually have different reading strategies that I teach. 

Front of the classroom: classroom expectations board (we are creating graphic organizers on the different expectations tomorrow to add to the board), big goals, daily objectives, calendar/helpers/class promise board, and another view of my library. On the side wall by the TV (the one you can't see) I have FIVE, yes FIVE, student computers!

Side Wall: "Great Work" wall is up top using clothes pins, alphabet strip, word wall, new vocabulary words, student lockers and turn in spot (on the easel so work stays in number orders). 

Close up of desk: The red and white binders are for student tracking, the purple books are science and social studies workbooks, the front of my desk is for students to write shoutouts, and the cart is filled with supplies I need to introduce to my students (math journals, agenda books, etc.)

And finally, my first assignment. I gave my students a chance to write me a question, something they want to learn in third grade, or something they want to do in third grade. After my students wrote, we discussed all of their questions and comments. The assignment generated a lot of great discussions. We talked about college, the Olympics, doing research, the diversity of our classroom (language and nationality), TCAP, monkeys, fish, and recess. My favorite student response is below. This is paper is a great reminder of how important it is to build concrete experiences into my math lessons before moving to abstract formulas and word problems.

"I want to learn math is sometimes its hard for me so I try to figer it out. But I can't so I use blocks for my hands. But if I get it wrong I use my head but sometimes I take it to recess."

Ready or Not...

...Here They Come!!!!!

Tomorrow is my last teacher work day. Our students come WEDNESDAY! Fortunately for me, Metro does this weird start up schedule. We have a half-day on Wednesday, in-service on Thursday, and our first full day on Friday. It is nice to be able to ease back into the year (from a sleep/ I want to be watching the Olympics perspective), but it is difficult to accomplish much in the first day and a half.  It is what it is, and the kids are coming and I am really excited to get this year started.

I had a great summer teaching in an EL summer science program, and have been working steadily throughout the summer to transition to 3rd grade and finish my master's degree. I would be totally prepared, but I have taken a lot of time over the past week to mentor a few new TFA teachers coming into our school. I am also, surprisingly, not too stressed. There are moment where I feel the pressure, and I am definitely in work mode, but it is not the beginning of the year chaos I felt last year. For example, I have found time in my schedule this week to work out, cook dinner, go out on a Saturday night, and watch the Olympics. Last night I even made my acting debut in an awesome SLANT video.

I have some great resources to share, pictures to post, and stories to tell, but for now the bottom line is:

YEAR 2 is so much better! 

A sneak peak at future posts. I cannot take credit for the idea behind the poster or thought bubbles (thanks TFAnet!),  but the design is all mine and I am pumped to share SLANT with my students!

I survived!

Its official. I survived my first year teaching. Let's try that again, I SURVIVED MY FIRST YEAR TEACHING! There are very few moments and challenges in my life that compare to my first year teaching.

Before I started teaching I would hear statistics about the retention rates of teachers. Things like "30% of teachers leave teaching in the first 3 years, 45% leave in the first 5 years." I just couldn't understand it. It didn't make sense for someone to work so hard to get licensed and then just leave. Now I get it. I totally get it.

Not even 2 months into my first year I was wondering what I had gotten myself into. I was in hell, but least I was getting paid for it. 


3 months into the year I made a deal with myself: I will finish my TFA commitment and then try a different type of school setting. I put four years to begin this career, I felt like I should try it for at least that long. 


4 months into the year and my eyes were on June. Could I make it? I honestly wasn't sure. As I got ready every morning I would count the hours until I got to go home. 


5 months into the year, holy crap...I am over half way done. 6 months into the year: I had given up...well at least that is what I told myself. The reality is that I didn't give up, I just needed to break the cycle of exhaustion. I went home immediately after school every day except Thursday--tutoring day. Thank God for tutoring day. I LOVED Thursday tutoring, and so did my kids. After 2 weeks the rest of my class was begging to come to tutoring too. 


7 months into the year. I think I might be getting the hang of this. I am used to the chaos. And I think there might be some learning going on. Just kidding, let's review how we move from our desks to the carpet. 


8 months into the year. Let's finish up this year so I can have a fresh start. I sort of know what I am doing now. Just kidding, I won't be teaching at my school next year. Oh shit, I need to find a new job. I have a new job--3rd graders are big. Wow, there are a lot of people who believe in me. Maybe I am making an impact?


Last month of the year. Pressure is off. What are they going to do to me? I am already leaving. Let's have a little bit of fun. I am going to plan my own way...just to see if it works. It works, but I wish they would stop writing all over my damn classroom. Too bad they love cleaning. 


Last week of the year: My mom is a life saver! She is an awesome packer too. We don't need a schedule. No, we can't stop learning. Just because it is the end of the year, doesn't mean we shouldn't learn. I love you, have a great summer. I won't miss them. I'm not sorry about it either. I SURVIVED!

And there you have it. A quick summary of my year. I still can't believe I am done. I wrote the summary to show how I was feeling as the year progressed. The reality of this year was that I was miserable. The reality is that I loved each and every one of my kids...I just hated my class. The reality was that despite our many, many challenges my kids learned. They learned! As a class we achieved 1.4 years of reading growth. For many of my students that means they are more than prepared for 2nd grade. For the rest of my students I can only hope that they will continue to rise to the challenge of reading and writing.

One of the most important things I taught my students was that they are in charge of their learning. My mom mentioned it to me when she came down to visit a second time, and she is right. They know what they need to do to learn. One of the best illustrations of this is a conversation I had with my kids who did not get to go to the end of year RAH (read at home) party. This means that they did not meet their at home reading goal.
B: Miss Prinzo, Do you remember when I got to go to the RAH party. I read a lot of books.
Miss Prinzo: I know B. I was hoping that you would read more this quarter.
B: I needed to do better.
C: I didn't have books at home
(before I could say something..)
T: That's not true. Miss Prinzo makes sure everyone has books.
B: Yeah, all you had to do was ask.
J: It is your job to get to the RAH party. 
B: We didn't get to go because we didn't read the books.
It sounds crazy, but this is one of my favorite moments from this year. I could not have been prouder of my boys---they truly understood that they were in charge of their goal and refused to let "C" blame me for it. For the record, B had already started his summer reading log before the last day of school. Hopefully it will stick.

On the last day of school I was given 2 notes. I have read both of them at least a dozen times since then. They have helped restore the belief I once had in myself.

One was from one of my most difficult students' parents, "You treated him like a star. You are truly skilled at your job and you are an inspiration to these little kids...the impact of your work is so significant, it will help him for the rest of his life."  I cannot tell you how much I appreciated her note.  It helped me put my year into perspective and realize that I did make a difference. Not the difference I had hoped for, but a difference.

The second note was from my team leader. She was a rock for me this year and I am pretty sure she helped kept me from quitting more than a few times. "I know this has been a rough year for you, but you made it through it--stronger and smarter..."


I am smarter and stronger. I made it through my first year teaching and I am ready for next year.

Mrs. Prinzo reading to my kids during the last week of school.
Read alouds were the best part of teaching this year!