it starts getting real

At a meeting towards the end of the afternoon today (which I was, naturally, late to because we had been admiring each others' bulletin boards in the hallway), I was handed a piece of paper by Jess, my dean. Jess hands me a lot of pieces of paper, so this is generally unremarkable, except when I looked down at the paper, it had 25 names on it. My homeroom roster.

School starts for me, for real, on Monday. It has already started for many of my friends both here and in Atlanta. It's already started for the 4th through 8th graders at my school. Do I feel prepared? Not remotely. We don't even really have a schedule for the first day yet (a project for tomorrow's third grade team meeting, I hope). Will I be ready by Monday? God, I hope so. Am I excited? Absolutely.

This week, I've finally started to get to interact with kids. All week long, we've been doing literacy testing for everyone from kindergarten through sixth grade, and I've tested kids in every grade but fifth. This includes five of my own students, who I tested this morning. And so far, I must say I love elementary school even more than I thought I would. Kids are really, really cute, and the ones I've tested--about 12 of them in all--have been pleasures to work with.
That being said, if I'm going to be teaching in the preK - 3 range, I am so glad I have third graders. I have renewed respect for my kindergarten and first-grade colleagues, as Monday brought two tests interrupted by bathroom mini-emergencies and one test interrupted by sniffles from a kindergartener who wanted her mommy, and today brought a very sassy first-grader with whom I had this exchange:

First-grader, looking at a chart of letters: I feel funny.
Ms. L, wondering how best to rush a six-year-old to the bathroom without disturbing the fourth-graders in the hallway: Why, what's wrong?
First-grader: Well, I don't know what sound the letter y makes.

He then proceeded to insert sentences about what he observed in the book's pictures when asked to read simple phrases like "Look out!". Testing took a lot longer than anticipated.

That's not to say that literacy testing is all sunshine and roses. It's not. In three days, I haven't tested a single kid at grade level, not even the four kindergarteners I worked with on Monday. Of the third-graders I tested today, the highest one was a step 6, which is where a student should be ending first grade/beginning second grade. The lowest (and there were two) were step 2s--a mid-kindergarten level. I had some kids (like the sassy first-grader) with great comprehension but unable to decode even the simplest non-sight words. I had more kids who could read grade-level texts but couldn't comprehend a single thing from them. One of the fourth-graders I tested yesterday started out with an R text--a mid-fourth grade text, so above grade level for her. Seven tests later, I handed her off to the literacy director to test her on an F text (early-mid first grade). I had a kindergartener who spoke about six words of English (being, of course, "Can I go to the bathroom?" like any good five-year-old), a second-grader who refused to speak to me for the first three or four minutes in my classroom, and many students who nearly burst into tears in frustration.

But I also had a third-grader who, before learning that I was his math teacher, announced that math was his favorite subject and that he already knew his times tables (multiplication isn't taught until about November of third grade). I met a first-grader who is nearly a year ahead of grade level, who waited through an entire staff meeting so that I could take her to a classroom to pick up some workbooks Sara, one of the first-grade teachers, had left for her. And the fact that every kid left with a smile on their face is a good thing. It might have been a smile of relief of not having to sit in a library and read silly stories anymore. It might have been a smile of joy at being reunited with their parent. But every kid seems at least marginally excited to come to school on Monday.

As I head out into the dangerous-heat-index evening for a quick jog (staying in the shade and well-hydrated, I swear, Dad!), a few random questions I have been ruminating on this week. In case you can't tell, I spend a lot of time sitting in my car by myself:

1. What is the best way to extract a dead cockroach from a file cabinet drawer without having to, you know, touch it?
2. Why is it that whenever I go to Walmart, I can't find a parking spot that isn't at least 200 yards away from the entrance?
2a. Why do I find myself at Walmart at least once every 72 hours?
3. Why are drivers in Louisiana so accident-prone?
4. Why did my bosses not remove spider solitaire from my work computer if they wanted me to get anything done?
5. Why can't I ever get my coffee to taste right?
6. Why have I developed an addiction to orange Tic-Tacs that rivals that of Paulie Bleeker?
7. Why didn't I try to get on College Jeopardy when I had a chance?

Until next time, when I'm bound to be really freaking out...