My report card

Hmmm….what should I put here.  Ya know, it really irks me when I have these great thoughts that I want to get down on paper and they occur right in the middle of my school day when I have zero time to do anything but teach my kids and plan and prepare for the upcoming days or weeks.  All those thoughts that I deemed great and worthy of Opendiary publishing have long left me and now I am just blank.  I do remember, though, that I was thinking about how much I have learned so far this school year.

I wish you all could meet my little Carlos, well all of my students but Carlos is SOOOO cute!  He’s probably one of the shortest kids in class.  He knows some English, but still struggles with it.  Last week he brought me book orders and told me there was one he wanted me to look at and tell him if he had enough money.  Now, Carlos’ family is so poor that he has to sleep on the couch because he has no bed! *sad face*  Anyway, you have to know Carlos to think this was just cute, but he pointed out a Transformers book that was $4.95.  I asked him to show me how much money he had in his pocket and he had four dollars.  The only thing I said was "Yes, Carlos, that’s enough!"  I couldn’t bear to tell him he didn’t have enough.  I figured I could fork out the extra dollar for the book.  But it was so cute the way he said it and he kept bugging me about it all day: "Teacher, now can I bring the book order?"  "Teacher, I have the money in my pocket."  Ohhh, he’s darling!  He’s always saying "like this teacher?"  When he shows me his work, that’s his classic line.  Oh, I love it!

It makes me feel good that in my group of kids, no one is reading on level A anymore.  Level A is the lowest reading level and by now all of my kids should be at a level G (each level gets more difficult), but the key word is SHOULD.  My non-english speaking students come hardly reading at all.  I am so proud of them and me that they have all moved up at least one level (some of them have moved up more!). YAY! Go us!  And, they’ve come so far in writing.  At the first of the year they could hardly write a sentence.  Now they can write 2, 3, 4, 5, sometimes more great sentences and they get excited about writing! It’s almost a relief for me because I really only have time to truly have them sit down and write for a good 30 minutes about 2 days a week.  The rest of their writing is either during centers or Calendar when we write sentences on our whiteboards.  I’m glad they’re getting some practice each day!

Life is good.  Report cards go home Tuesday and I am proud to be able to report improvement for the majority of my students.  I guess if I had my own report card, I would be proud to report that I’m learning tons!  There might not be A’s, but I’ve progressed and that’s what we care about as teachers!

~Jerseycorazon