First of all, lets celebrate the fact that I am officially on summer vacation!! I understand the rest of the world is still working but for my career this is a big thing. The first
exciting thing I have planned is to really clean my house. I want to get that task done and out of the way so I can have fun the rest of the summer.
Second, I am so behind in editing pictures, so that is next on my to do list. So there are no pictures with this post.
Finally, I wanted to do a wrap up of my school year while it is still fresh in my memory. As I mentioned at the beginning of the year, I was taking on a different position. I still taught second grade, but I was in a new room called the co-teaching room. The room consist of children with mild learning disabilities to children who were typical learners. As part of this, I got to have a full time interevention specialist in my room.
When they first started talking about this and asking for volunteers last year, I was unsure. Did I want to leave my comfort zone to try something new. I really prayed about it and the decision actually turned out to be a definite yes! The best part about it is that I am teaching with a really good friend of mine and that has made all the difference. We are so comfortable with each other that everything fell into place. We know if we are having a bad day, that we can just give each other the look and we back off. I think it has been a blessing because our students see we are at ease with each other and we have had such a calm classroom this year.
I have loved having an extra pair of eyes and ears, as well as someone to share this experience with. It is really too bad that every room could not have a co-teacher. We divided the task of teaching reading and math. She took the math and I took the reading. While one was teaching, the other one was helping students. We took shared responsibility for centers and small group work. I am sure that if any of you walked into our classroom you would not be able to pinpoint who was the intervention and who was the regular ed teacher. We have several administrators comment on how they didn't even know the difference with students because we worked with everyone equally. It really benefited all of our students and we were able to show growth with every student in our room.
I am excited that we will be doing this next year as well. I am happy that we had a strong finish to the year.
I also have to share a story because I think it is such a strong reminder of why I do what I do. Sometimes we get so wrapped up in the politics and business of our job that we forget the little things. Education is changing so much right now and I am not always sure it is for the best interest of the children involved. However on the last day of school we got a reminder of what is really important in teaching and that is touching the lives of children. We have a student in our classroom that comes from a rough home life. She is being raised by her father and lets just say, home is not always easy. This child is very guarded in her relationships and does not show emotion easily. Moments before dismissal on Thursday, we were saying goodbye to our students and many were coming up and giving us hugs and telling us they would miss us. I honestly did not expect any emotion from the above student, in fact I thought she may even tell us she was glad to be moving on. So as I turn around, she wraps her arms around me and gives me a hug and tells me she is going to miss me. Well by this time I have tears in my eyes and she goes and does the same thing to my co-teacher. We are both in tears and as she walks out the door, she has tears in her eyes to. Up until that point, I really thought she did not like me and I was just a thorn in my side but apparently we had chipped away at that tiny rough exterior. I do not tell this story to brag on myself but rather to share a lesson on how we don't always know how we may touch just one persons life. I will continue to pray for this little girl and that as she goes on through her school career she will have teachers that will love and encourage her even though they may not get initial feed back.
So that's a wrap. I will try to get some pictures ready for a post soon. I would be more than happy to answer any specific questions you have about co-teaching.
