I am sooooooo proud of my Kindergarteners... correction: my first graders! Today they graduated from the Kindergarten summer school, and next week they enter the first grade!

Our reading goal was to move up 6 points on the DRA, and on average we met 197% of our goal. Every student at the very least met their goal; one even tripled it.

Our math goal was to increase 70%, and we met 88% of that goal. Nonetheless, our students soared! They know far more than they ever did before, and they learned what hard work can bring!

My greatest fear is that I will never learn anything else about the class that first taught me how to be a teacher. They were my teachers, too, after all, though I could not tell them that. I will never forget Andrew falling on the floor wailing, because he was in the group that was "less than" the other side... failed attempt at teaching greater and less than. Nor will I ever forget watching Andrew begin reading or my deep disappointment when he stopped showing up to summer school. Nor will I ever forget that moment when Marquis fluently read a Level H book and gave me the biggest grin and a high five! Nor will I forget when Aziyah counted blocks one at a time! Nor will I forget when Christian apologized for using mean words! Nor will I ever forget when my students taught my mentor teacher how to stand "hip and lip"! Nor will I ever forget when Zaquariae began to participate in class, sometimes bursting with the answers! Nor will I ever forget when shy little Ju'Maree transformed into the class clown! I will never forget these beautiful faces. They will be with me forever.

Teaching continues to transform my life. I wonder what two years will do to me.

Rough days and good days. I unfortunately do not have time to type all, but let me just give a glimpse of the last few days:

BEST MOMENT: A spontaneous hug from the dearest little boy ever on a rough day for him (he wasn't acting out... just carrying family pain into the classroom).

WORST MOMENT: Watching a little girl cry over trying to unbutton pants that were far too small.

GREATEST ACHIEVEMENT (not necessarily my own achievement, but I am as proud of a student's achievement as my own): A girl, who had no concept of one-to-one counting at the beginning, demonstrated mastery of the GREATER THAN concept!

PLACES FOR GROWTH: Learning to challenge my three most advanced students while not losing my three least advanced.

MOST FUN: Reading to my kids with all silly voices I could think of!

Today was... well, it was Day 2 of Kindergarten, and I suspect a fairly typical one in the summer experience. I cannot call it bad, because truthfully the kids were well-behaved and not one cried (like they did yesterday) to take a nap. Yet, it was *hard.* I had a carefully planned lesson for today's objective (to identify a number one less than a given number) only to discover a significant portion of my class had no number sense and could only barely manage counting forward (if that), let alone backwards. One dearheart told me that 22 came after 5, and I could not for the life of me figure out where in the classroom she was looking to come up with that number.

That being said, it was a day of falling in love with students who, already, are years behind their privileged peers. I have only four weeks to work with these dearhearts, and Kindergarten is far from my ideal age range, but if I can make a difference in their future achievement, I will be happy. I asked a child why we were doing what we were doing, and one of them (as I hoped) said so that we could count like a first grader. Another child piped in so that we could then eventually count like a third grader. I followed these two statements with so that we could then count like fifth grader, and then a seventh grader, and then a high schooler... and eventually like a COLLEGE student!

Their response was a bunch of giggles and a few exclaimed "College?!" back to me. Yet all of them beamed with pride over the possibility that what we were doing now might prepare them for this very distant dream. I hope their future teachers tell them the same thing. They have a right to teachers who will not give up on them after seeing diagnostic test results.

First week of training in Phoenix will be done tomorrow, and I am utterly exhausted. I thought I would have written multiple times by now, but when even a good night's rest continues to elude me, this blog slips to the background. I will simply say that it appears I will be teaching elementary special education in Pointe Coupee, Louisiana, but I am still not yet hired. For the summer training, I am teaching Kindergarten. Anyway, I have ten minutes before dinner, so I need to go.