Sunday, October 21, 2012

New Beginnings

New  beginnings are great.  Who doesn't enjoy a fresh start?  As a society, we welcome a new year with resolutions to make positive changes in our lives.  New relationships bring us new opportunities and perhaps even new love.  New high school graduates look forward to not only their freedom from parental restrictions, but also for a new start at a new place.

I had a classmate, and a good friend at the time, who you could easily forget was in the room because she was so quiet and shy.  After her first semester at a college just a little over an hour away, she was a totally new person.  Gone was the quiet teenager with little self confidence and now she was full of exciting stories to tell of her experiences.

As a kid, I always looked forward to a new quarter or semester in school, basically because I had a chance to do better.  I wasn't the best student, not because I couldn't do the work, but because I just couldn't bother myself to do it, as far as my memory goes.  When I began going back to school to become a teacher in 1998, that was my fresh start.  I surprised myself on how great a student I could be.  I made the Dean's list every semester, and received the Presidential Award, graduating suma cum laud.  This was one fresh start that showed me what I could really do.  Gone was the girl who didn't finish what she started.  Gone was the girl who couldn't stay focused.  Gone was the girl who didn't have an ambition or goal to look forward to.  Now I was the woman who had a dream to be a teacher, who gained the confidence that she could do anything she attempted.

Now my latest fresh start is my new teaching position.  I won't lie to you all, it was, and still is at some point, a huge change for me.  I went from teaching 7th and 8th grade students to now teaching 3rd graders.  I also have to adjust from teaching different groups of students for 80 minutes at a time to teaching the same students for the entire day.  Also, I taught language arts, now I also have to teach social studies, science, and math.  There are also different components that I have to focus on that was never a concern for me in middle school.  If a middle school student struggled with reading, then at that point they were probably in special ed for language arts.  However, 3rd graders are still working on their reading, so I have to continuously measure their progress with fluency checks. I had to learn how to do that.

Now that we're 7 weeks in to the new school year, I'm now thinking like a 3rd grade teacher.  This fresh start has come with challenges, but I've proven to myself that I'm more than capable of meeting any challenge that comes my way.  I know that I'll never feel like I know it all, but I don't believe that I'll ever know it all.  No matter how long I teach I'll always view myself as a learner and a work in progress.

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