#3

In my first year teaching, I had quite a few kids that I wished I had known better. It being my first year, I saw them as more of a blob than as 21 individual kids who all wanted a connection with me. There would have been many days that year that I would not have spoken directly with all of them. With each passing year, the number of kids that I wish I had known better goes down. This is mostly just a natural progression, of becoming more comfortable as a teacher, of knowing how to interact with fifth graders better, but mostly of seeing each kid as unique in academics AND personality. This adds 20+ different levels of what to think about, how to teach best, and where to go next; a level for each individual child. While this makes teaching that much more complicated and frustrating, it must also make the quality of education improve.

All of that to say that 3 is someone that I wish I had had more time to get to know. I wish I had tried to speak to her daily, and maybe I did a better job than I think. She was one of the louder kids, especially at snack time, telling some story or quizzing kids on the upcoming test material. Using words that were way above a fifth grade level as if she had used them a hundred times before. With her "accomodative eye dysfunction" her reading level and, therefore, grades, were much lower than one would expect after hearing her fluent descriptions of the transport system in a plant. I found out about halfway through the year that this meant that when she went from looking up at the board to looking down at her paper it took one of her eyes 8 seconds to adjust. Imagine how much I had to think about my instruction now for just one kid! 8 seconds of lag time might not sound like much but after this sentence look down at the T on your keyboard and count 8 seconds --when you get to 8 that is when her right eye would finally get that T into focus. That is when she could finally start reading along or looking for the answer that her teacher needed and by the time she found it, we could already be onto the next question - there's a lot of standards to cover by the time the MCAS comes, you know! So I had to plan lessons so that we did a big chunk together on the board or as a discussion and then when we were in the book, we stayed there for another big chunk. Even though I did not feel like I made a grand connection with 3, she did remind me how much each individual kid needs to be considered when designing instruction. She also reminds me of how important it is to try to make a verbal connection with each kid every day. I will miss her strong- willed ways and her well stated opinions.