A little background on my teaching career: My first year of teaching I taught first grade, then due to numbers I was force transferred to teach 5th grade at a new school. I absolutely loved my school, I did not however love 5th grade. But I ended up teaching it for 3 years before moving back to first grade this year.
Now, this was not the easiest transition. I thought it would be; I said to myself, “I’ve taught first grade before, I know how to do this!” Nope. Wrong. First of all, the first year of teaching is basically survival mode 24/7. Sure I thought I was pretty great, but I also had great supporters telling me I was great. The transition from 5th to 1st was much more work than I expected, and the behaviors that went along with it were even harder. I forgot how dependent first graders are.
So I thought this would be a great thing to write about! My first year back in 1st grade, re-figuring out the ins and outs. Well, if you haven’t noticed, I am writing this first post in NOVEMBER! That pretty much sums up how well that plan went. It’s been a tough start to the year. I won’t bore you with the details, but I’m hoping that I can now stay consistent. I want to share my mistakes (the abundance of them) and my celebrations (which hopefully will start happening more!). Teachers need to stick together, even if that just means reading to know you’re not alone! And we all need to laugh at ourselves and each other sometimes.
I’ll leave you with this quote, which I found and adapted out of a textbook while getting my masters:
“Failure is a challenge, not an obstacle.”
We need to remember that, because sometimes that failure seems like one giant fallen tree on our way to success.
