This year will be my first year teaching. It has been a long
journey to get here. I knew I wanted to be a teacher since middle and high
school. I started college in Fall 2007 and finally graduated in December 2016.
9 years of college. Now mind you, I had to take a couple of semesters off due
to personal reasons and I took one year off after graduating the first time
with a general studies degree. (I took a year off to teach in Japan and make
sure that I still wanted to be a teacher. Throughout that year I did a lot of
soul-searching and realized that this was the career for me. So I moved back
home in June 2014, started back at Western and graduated about two years after
that. So I actually have two bachelor’s degrees, one from graduating with just
a general studies degree to work in Japan for a year and one with my coveted
teaching degree that took 9 years to complete.)
So after graduating last December, I decided to substitute
teach. I got offered two building substitute positions, however, after a lot of
thought I turned them down. Keith (my husband) and I had our wedding to plan
and having a full time job at that time would have been stressful. So I subbed
part-time from January 2017-June 2017 and we got married May 2017. After the
wedding (it was perfect by the way), I started applying to as many teaching
jobs as possible. I do not know how many jobs I applied for, but it was quite a
few. I ended up having seven interviews. Three of the interviews were with
Benton Harbor Charter School Academy. The first interview was a screening
interview on the phone through their charter in Grand Rapids. I passed that
one, so they set me up with a second interview which was run by two of the
veteran teachers at the school. They called me back an hour after my interview
to see if I would be interested in having another interview with the principle.
So the next day I met Mr. Harris and he hired me right then and there.
During the second interview with the two teachers, I felt
like it was going well, so I asked if they had any summer school positions open
still. They said that they did and asked if I was interested it. I said I was
and they said that they would keep that into consideration. So I had my
interviews the last week of June. On Thursday, July 6th (one day
after my 29th birthday) I started summer school at Benton Harbor
Charter Academy. I taught second and third graders, many whom had struggled
during the academic school year. If these students did not pass their NWEA
test, they would be retained and would be repeating their last grade. Many of them
did not improve, I tried not to take it personal. Two and a half weeks is
really hard for students to make big jumps and a lot of them had not made
enough gains during the school year to move on.
Summer school was very eye-opening for me. I got to see real
students in a real classroom. “My” classroom, even if it was only a short
amount of time that I had them. It was a great way to meet students, staff, get
to know the building and in general get my feet wet in my new job. I learned
about my school’s leveled library, the testing that my school does, how lunch
works, how pick up and drop off works, how the school handles behavior issues,
the curriculum, the technology, and much more. If you ever get a chance as a
first year teacher to do summer school, I would highly recommend it because you
learn so much about how your school operates and it puts you that much ahead
before the actual school year starts. If I had not done summer school, I would
have had to learn all that stuff during the first months of teaching and it
would have been that much more overwhelming. I mean, I know those first weeks
are going to be overwhelming, but at least I have a head start on what to
expect.
So right now I’m kind of in the middle of summer vacation.
It is August 4th. We start bootcamp week on August 21st,
so 16 more days of relaxing a little and preparing a lot for the upcoming year.
So far, I have started my classroom library and tried to organize it a little
bit. I have been going to many garage sales and buying gently used books. I am
very excited to have my own library because I love reading and I want my love
of reading to rub off onto my students. I will actually have a classroom of
students to read my books now and who I can read to. I’m super excited about
this! Oh, by the way, I think I forgot to mention I will be teaching first
grade! I’m am also super excited about this because first grade was my favorite
elementary grade and where reading clicks with a lot of students.
Another thing I have been working on is buying games and
puzzles for indoor recess. It has been a fun search trying to find nice, but
also inexpensive activities. I have also been searching for bulk items such as book
bags and cubbies for my students. I finally found what I needed at the dollar
tree in Kalamazoo. I was very excited about that too! I will be taking in my
receipts and reimbursement paper in today, wish me luck. I also went to our
local library and printed off a bunch of color prints for my classroom,
numbers, colors, letters, name tags, etc. to hang around my room. Over the next
week, I will work on laminating everything. My dad got me a laminator last year
for Christmas; it has been a blessing. Thanks Dad!
So we have two more weeks before bootcamp starts. Over the
next few Fridays, we have various events to attend. Tonight is a fish fry.
Another teacher said people from the community mostly come, and not returning
students, so it will be interesting to see who comes this year. I’ll let you
know in my next post how it goes. I’m not sure all of what goes on at bootcamp,
but it is professional development for us teachers to get prepared for the
school year. I’ll let you know how it goes once it starts up. I’m very excited to
start my first year of teaching if you can’t tell. Hopefully I can keep
blogging along the way. I just wanted to get out my experiences so far.
Love,
Krista ~ First Grade Teacher
