Small Moments Brought to Me by Little People

Recently I accepted a job as a 5th grade math teacher in the school I worked in as an aide last year. I am beyond thrilled! I accepted to job on a Thursday and hit the ground running the following Monday with all kinds of trainings and meetings. Meanwhile I was putting long hours into getting my classroom ready for open house--a mere 7 days after I began setting up! (see pictures in previous posts!)

So here I am, day 7 of teaching now over, and I have to say...I am loving my job. It came to me today, somewhere between being given an apple by one student and joking around about fancy pants and music shoes with another, that my day is made up of small moments brought to me by little people. I love all my kiddos. They have great personalities, they are at just the right age where I can infuse my humor and sarcasm into my teaching, and they make me so proud every day. Watching those lightbulbs go on is what I love about being a teacher. 

I only have my homeroom kinds for about two hours out of the school day, and in the other times I am teaching math to the other two 5th grade classes. The first two days of school were spent getting to know our homeroom kids. We did some team building, some Three Truths and a Lie, and lots of going over rules, procedures, and expectations. I have been modeling some of the things the kids will get to do when they are the Star Student of the Week. Each week I will pick a student to fill this role, and they will get to fill out a fun All About Me Poster, do some show and tell, and answer one question from each classmate. I am constantly surprised at how preceptive the kids are, and about how much they pick up on. Briefly I mentioned that I once aspired to be an author. Today as I was answering student questions that they had written on index cards, I came across one that said, "What would one of the titles of your books be?" I was floored. I had forgotten I had even mentioned it, and here was this student asking for an example of a title of a book I would write. So cool!

I have an ongoing joke with one of my kiddos who loves the Packers. His question to me was, "Who is your favorite football team?" Before I got the chance to answer this in class, he approached me at the end of the day and tried to weasel the answer out of me. So after some back and forth, I whispered to him, "It's the team that's on your pencil!" He takes a step back, opening himself up to the whole room, and says, "What's that, Miss Wilke, you said you love the Bears?" And of course the room immediately erupted into peals of laughter and subsequent teasing, with me saying, in exasperated tones, "You guys,  this is how rumors get started!" A few days later this student was wearing a purple and gold Lakers t-shirt, and I took the opportunity to point out that he was representing his team--THE VIKINGS! And now we go back and forth.

Although I've never been called a mathematical genius per se, I am enjoying teaching the subject. We have a new math curriculum this year, so I am learning right along with the kids--how to teach that is, not the math itself! Although the material is unfamiliar, and sometimes we all feel like we are slogging through molasses, the lessons are punctuated by aha moments, moments where they really get it, moments where they are explaining the way they solved a problem in a way I didn't even think about--and I am so proud of them. Today I had two such moments right in a row and I swear I almost cried!

There are so many things I love about my job. I get gently teased by the experienced teachers for being so positive--they say I'm in the new teacher "honeymoon stage". And they may be right. I know I'll have my days--they can't all be rainbows and sunshine. But right now I am content to ride on these happy feelings, because there is so much that is good about what I am doing. I have never felt a greater sense of purpose. This is where I belong :)

Today, I am a teacher.