Mid-Year Reflections (and a little teacher humor)

We're officially halfway through the school year!  (Well, I am at least!)  

As I reflect on the first half of the year I just have to smile at what an adventure it's been so far this year...  

I currently have 14 boys and 5 girls in my class and I can honestly say that there is hardly ever a dull moment with this bunch.  My 5 girls are sweet, well-behaved, and pretty tough.  My boys, on the other hand, are another story!  My boys are very emotional...  We're talking criers.  Yes, tears.  Everyday.  They've got great personalities and really want to do a good job and what's right, but they're the most emotional and immature group of boys I've ever taught.  It's a good day if only 2 or 3 cry.  (I'm not even kidding!  My class has been hailed by other staff has having all of the "drama kings."  Truth.)  It can definitely be draining at times, but they really are an incredibly sweet bunch of kids and they've definitely won my heart!  There's definitely a lot of tough love happening in my classroom in a daily basis, but I think my kids realize that despite how tough third grade is, I'm there for them and I do truly care.  My last two classes of kids have been pretty easy-going and well-behaved, so I think God thought I needed a little more spice in my teaching life this year!

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As I reflect on myself as a teacher so far this year, I'd say that I've stayed afloat, but I haven't done much to go above and beyond this school year.  I think a lot of that goes back to the group of kids that I have and some of the challenges they bring.  Some things aren't as easy for this group to jump into and independence isn't quite their thing yet, so it's a lot of baby steps (or scaffolding, if we want to use fancy words).  As we move into the second semester I want to push myself a bit further to push my students in their work.  I'm not saying I've been super easy on them and haven't challenged them, but I do feel like I've given up on doing certain things because I think it will take a lot of time and effort with this bunch.  Yes, there will probably be more tears, but we'll just get through it as best we can!

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I've definitely dropped the ball on blogging since the school year started...  I feel like my blog is kind of going through an identity crisis in some ways and I'm working on finding the right balance between blogging about teaching and everything else in life.  At the end of an exhausting day of work, I'm not finding myself to be in much of a mood to blog about school stuff.  I want this to be a blog that's a resource for teachers, though, and I feel like I've been neglecting that a lot over the past few months.  I'm planning to set a more regular blogging schedule soon, which will hopefully help me get a bit more direction on here.  

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Anyway, thanks for reading / following and putting up with my ramblings.

Happy Saturday!