The Best is Yet to Come

There is one word that comes to mind to describe my first week student teaching: amazing. I love everything about this profession. I love my kiddos (even the ones that drive me up the wall), I love teaching them, I love watching them learn... this is totally the profession for me! I may come home exhausted every night, but it is very worth it. Now more than ever, I'm praying as hard as I can for a teaching position. And I'm not a prayer, so that is saying a lot!

The morning of my first day!

My cooperating teachers (both of them) are so great. They welcomed me with open arms and have already made me a huge part of the classroom. My very first day I taught a science lesson, and continued to teach science through the rest of the week. Friday I administered and graded the spelling test. Right now, I'm sitting in my comfy robe, grading what feels like a mountain of papers. I do feel like I'm having to figure a lot of stuff out (especially grading - there are so many papers this weekend that I messed up on and had to scratch out the grade and regrade - learning curve, right?), but I really feel like I am learning a ton of stuff by being completely immersed in it. The best way to learn is by doing and making mistakes, after all!



As I said, the most difficult thing so far has been grading these papers. It's hard to determine how much each question should be worth - 2 points, 5 points, or each worth points adding up to 100. I asked Ms. G and she suggested 2 points each unless it was a quiz or test, then told me it was up to me - I am the teacher! I panicked a little. So much responsibility - I hold these kid's grades in my hands! Not only that, but I want them to be correct so badly that I am willing to be a bit flexible with the grading. As long as I know that they understand and they got it, I give them the points. For example, one of their punctuation sentences was:

"they will try to bite anything that bothers them so watch out"

The sentence, according to the key, should be corrected to:

"They will try to bite anything that bothers them. So watch out!" 

However, I had many kids who corrected the sentence to:

"They will try to bite anything that bothers them, so watch out!"

Or something similar to that, which is still technically correct. So I gave them the points. I don't want to be a teacher who is so strict and is not willing to be flexible with grading if the kiddo truly understands the concept.



Anyways, this upcoming week we have benchmark testing for reading and writing. Wish my kids luck!