and break begins.

Today marks the official beginning of Fall Break. I celebrated with a series of happy hours before heading to Berryline with my friend Mallory, and now Mallory and I are sitting on the couch watching Project Runway before I head off to pick up my brother at the airport! It's wonderful to be sitting here and vegging out, not worried about planning or reteaching the red GLEs on my tracker or a new individual behavior plan for Nya. I'm really looking forward to spending time with Chris and enjoying some time off this weekend.

I came across this quote today in the Facebook frenzy over the passing of Steve Jobs. It really spoke to me because I finally feel like I am in a job that I love--even with all of its frustrations and all of its challenges. My mind could be changed by next week, of course, but for now, I'm happy to be going into this four-day weekend on a high note.

"Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking, and don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it."

letters to myself

I know, I know, a double post. But on my way back inside from collecting the stack of tests I have to grade from my car, I found a letter in my mailbox. It was addressed to me, in my own handwriting. And when I opened it, I realized it was the letter I had written myself at the end of institute.

Jim, our CS this summer, had the brilliant idea of making us write letters to ourselves that he would send out in October to remind us of what we felt at the end of those crazy five weeks this summer. I'm impressed with my wisdom those three long months ago, and I thought I would share it:

Dear Kate,

Hopefully today was a good day. If it wasn't, I want you to think back to the day you gave your post-assessment at Institute, when you ran down to CS session to grade Sage's test to see what she had accomplished. I want you to remember the pride in each of your students and the responsibility you felt to make sure each of them succeeded. I want you to remember the lessons you swore you'd learned about how to invest your kids and make them care about each other.

Today, leaving institute, I'm terrified about the prospect of starting all over with little people. But I'm excited to get the opportunity to get to teach what my 8th graders don't know. I hope that my classroom is a place of focused learning, where my students understand that what they're learning and how they're behaving today directly impacts what they'll be doing 5, 10, 20 years down the line. I hope that my kids respect each other, work well together, and have formed a community where it's okay to be different and make mistakes. I hope that my kids--and their families--know how much I care about them and that I would do anything for them.

I hope for myself that I haven't lost sight of why I signed up for this--that every kid deserves the tools and the confidence to achieve their wildest dreams, and that I am ready and able to get them there. Remember--you love your job and you love these kids. Take ownership of your classroom and do it.

Love,
Kate

Is my classroom where I hoped it would be? Not yet, but it's heading there. But I haven't lost sight of why I signed up for this, and that makes me proud.

keeping it personal

Today was Benchmark Day once again at my lovely elementary school. Never mind that our last benchmark was three weeks ago, and I had exactly eight days of instruction between then and now. Never mind that only one in five of my kids had passed the benchmark last time around, and this test included all of those topics PLUS rounding, estimation, and money (which I was supposed to teach in eight days). Never mind all that. As my principal likes to say, those are excuses, and we have no time for that.

Scanning the answer sheets for the benchmark test was, in a word, heartbreaking. Though I haven't scanned all of the sheets yet, so far just five of my 64 students have passed. Since most of the remaining sheets are from my tier 3 kids--the lowest kids who get the test read aloud to them--it seems unlikely that that number is going to go up anytime soon. Seeing that pop up on my computer screen was just awful. I felt like I had been making progress with my kids over the last two weeks, but seeing that come up made it seem like I was moving them backwards.

While I'm going to get a chance to look fully at the data on Thursday, I already know a few things. First, about a third of the test was stuff that I either didn't have time to teach or was a long-response question that the bulk of my kids couldn't read. When you focus in on the two-thirds of the test that I did attempt to teach, things look better. That's encouraging, that I seem to be able to impart some knowledge when given the time, and I can only hope that as the year goes on and we go over these concepts again and again, they'll start to stick.