Snoozing should be illegal

All in all it was a great first week of school. My personal goal for next week is to get more disciplined with actually waking up with my alarm clock. That has to be one of the top worst thing about going back to school - suddenly being obligated to wake up to an alarm clock five days of the week. I was really running to get to school on time Thursday and Friday, but fortunately was organized enough to get myself totally prepared for the morning the night before. That also meant that I was at school until 6pm every night last week. I am really trying to cut out earlier, but somehow it just doesn't happen.

I am really enjoying grade two so far. I got to do cool things like give a spelling test and was quite impressed how I was able to lay down the law so that no one dared to make a peep during the test. Friday was the first day that my students did not beg me to stay overnight at the school for a sleepover. I think I finally tired them out by the end of the week.

The best thing all week was to really observe what a great group they are in working together and supporting each other. Honestly, I was nearly in tears at random moments throughout the week, because of how absolutely wonderful this group is. It's not just me, on Friday after school I talked to their kindergarten teacher from two years ago about them and she said she spent nearly the whole year in tears for the same reason. She still has their pictures up on a wall at home.

For example, we talked a lot this week about how we all learn differently, at different rates and in different ways. Partly this is because I have two students in the class with significant enough special needs that they have personal assistants. But also, in general, I've got a class of extremely talented learners and learners who are really stuggling - I got the extremes. So we read several books and had many discussions about this. Near the end of the week, I told them the story of Helen Keller from an old book which I had read in the third grade. They were mesmerized and asked so many questions about her and talked about it all day. We also talked about how learning is like going up a hill, we are all learning more each day, but each of our hills look different. Right away, someone commented, "Yes, and some of the hills are hard and some are easy!" Then we drew what different hills might look like - some more steady, others with flat parts (when you might not be learning so fast) and then parts that go straight up when you are really learning a lot. They got it! Someone else was totally relating by saying, "Yeah, Mrs. Diana, I know, I was in one of those flat parts one time." So we talked about not worrying if you are in a flat part, that your day will come when you will get it too. And also, that we can all help each other out when we see them at a hard part in their hill. And then, they asked if they could draw their own hills. THAT is exactly how it's supposed to work in our school, where the students suggest their own ideas for inquiry and activities. So we did draw our own hills. It was way cool to see what everyone came up with because they were really all very different and I would say from what I know about them already a very accurate reflection of each individual.

And it helps when on a weekly reflection, you read that someone's answer to the question, "What is something new you learned this week?" was "That there could be so nice a teacher as you, because you are so calm."

I like grade two. :)