Something New

Guest Blogger - Shelby Brooks

This fall, I started my 4th year teaching but different than the previous years my final days of summer weren’t spent compulsively checking my e-mail for an updated class roster or frantically searching Transfinder to figure out which bus my littles would be riding home on after their first day of kindergarten.

My role this year is different, instead of having just 24 littles... I have close to 400, as I step out of the classroom and into the role of activity teacher (or ‘puter teacher’ as our littles affectionately call me). As wIth any new position there have been growing pains and adjustments; the indecision of what exactly I should be teaching, having only sixty minutes a week with each class and finding a way to balance lesson plans when it seems that one class is consistently behind. While I won’t directly be teaching our little monarchs to read this year or how to do addition, the role I have now is no less important. Being able to work with our littles outside of the general classroom I am able to see our students for who and what they really are, without a cloud of behavior charts and test scores. I am able to build relationships with these kiddos in a whole different way and they are able to do the same with me.

As we are approaching the end of the first nine weeks, I have a newly developed sense of appreciation for EVERYONE who works in our building. We truly operate with an “all hands on deck” mindset. Whether we’re opening milks in the morning or teaching guided reading during small groups, every person has a necessary role and no job is too small.