Teaching High

I love being a teacher! I cannot think of anything more fulfilling or rewarding than teaching elementary aged children. It's amazing to watch them grow and mature so quickly - plus, it's seriously the best booster-shot of self-esteem anyone could ask for!

Today was a great day. I just came back from spending Wednesday through Saturday at TMEA (the Texas Music Ed conference) in San Antonio. Not only did I get a ton of great ideas and a good recharge to finish out the year, but I came back with some awesome classroom materials for myself and my students. God bless my new slide whistle! It has the coolest sound ever invented (even my 6th graders think so!) and kids LOVE to imitate the way it sounds. This is fantastic, since I try every day (some days are more successful than others) to get my kids to explore their vocal ranges and learn what sounds are high and low. They just think they're playing a game - and I'm actually getting them to do exactly what I want! We also discovered the joys of making our own thunderstorms - courtesy of my new thunder-tube. Super simple invention, but it fascinates everyone that hears it. You should look it up - it rocks!

I had to wait until my last class of the day before I could use my favorite thing I brought back. The school where I teach in the afternoons has TEN decent quality mallet instruments - I don't know how, but WOW! Unfortunately, they have been used so rarely in the past that we only have enough mallets for three kids to play at a time. You can imagine my dilema as a roomfull of impatient kids tries to wait for their turn to hit something and make noise! However, thanks to my amazing principal and a brilliant TMEA vendor, our school is the proud owner of TEN brand new mallets for only $50! Today was the first day we've used them, and it was wonderful! By the second round of playing, EVERY kid had a chance to play! That was unfathomable until today!

To put the icing on my cake of a day, after school I had a sheet of paper in my teacher mailbox with the AR reading scores of the nine 3rd grade struggling readers I've been tutoring since November (by far my favorite group of students!). A couple of students keep me posted on their progress, but looking at that chart today, I was able to see all of their scores every month since we started. I've been seeing an improvement in my students, but looking at their test scores on paper blew me away! These 3rd grade students all started off with no higher than a 2.1 reading level (the level of a beginning 2nd grader). Several kids placed in the mid-to-low 1's! Today, none of my students are below a 2.6 and THREE of them are 3.0 and higher! HALLELUJAH! One adorable little boy has gone from a 1.2 to a 3.0 - and his mom told his classroom teacher that the number one thing he requested for Christmas was books to read! WOW! That one child makes it all worth it!

What a great way to start the week!