A Student, Again

10.13.10 By Aira Jackson-Sams

So this year I started the school year off with a lot of goals and aspirations for my students and on the back end of teaching (organization, grading of papers, to name a few), mostly because I thought as I entered my third year I knew enough to handle any situation.  Umm….I was naive. 
My first year of teaching was a very hard one, from learning the curriculum to managing some pretty outrageous 1st grade behavior; but in the end my students were able to go on to 2nd grade, and I survived.  My second year of teaching was dramatically different; I was familiar with the curriculum and I had in place a behavior management system that worked for my students and myself.  So voila the year went by - with a few hiccups, but on the whole it was a successful year. 
This year though, my third year…I am having an incredibly difficult time. On almost a daily basis I am presented with new challenges that my first two years of teaching did not prepare me for, and it is a little scary. 
But this is what I do know: every day I come to school with the feeling of optimism that today will be a little better and that my students will make baby steps toward becoming independent learners, mature enough to understand that they have self control, and that learning is important…so how do I make my goals and aspirations a reality?  I become a student again; I am reading about behavior management and am trying out new systems, I am thinking outside the box, I am talking with my collegues and asking for suggestions, and I am being patient.