I Love My Job!

I'm going to start of my blog post today with my REVELATION from Day 6 at #UNCCWP. My revelation today came during Jenny's demo. Well, I have had this feeling, thought, and understanding for a while now, but Jenny's demo really made it sink in again and was my REVELATION of the day ...

**I LOVE MY JOB**

Let me explain, Jenny teaches at a Montessori school and has a classroom of three to six year old kiddos. I do not envy her at all! I absolutely love little kids and they are precious, but I can not imagine the amount of patience it must take to work and teach these wonderful students. In reflecting on my own learning and education (Zack, my husband, and I have drastically different accounts) I realize that I do not remember ever "learning" how to sound out words to speak or write them. Of course I remember writing, learning to write sentences, learning to write paragraphs, and those types of lessons; but never really remembering how to sound words out. I think this is a tragedy. 

Zack on the other hand remembers learning to sound words out and spell phonetically like it was yesterday (does it count that his mom was a first grade teacher though?). His mom had him reading, spelling, and sounding out words like crazy! He is a 120% better speller than I am. He is probably 110% better sounder-outer of words too! Now, is this because he remembers learning how to? I mean don't get me wrong...I'm not horrible at spelling (maybe a little), but Zack is phenomenal at it! I do remember of course the "rules" (there is that word again!) of sounding words out...but there is a difference between Zack's ability and mine.

Zack, my wondeful-spelling husband, and I

So basically Jenny's demo got me thinking about how to help students retain these ideas and lessons. If the student retains this huge concept at a young age, do they become better spellers later? If they forget these teachings, or are like me and don't remember them specifically, do they loose some of these skills? In this case, should we teach it more often throughout school? Instead of thinking "Oh, OK, they got it...Now let's never really talk about it again." I think that thought in itself is absurd, so why does it happen? I feel like my questions are leading to more questions. Do we forget? Does that cause us to be less-skilled? Then why don't we teach it more frequently? (Geeze, my mind is getting tired!)

Scribing sentences originated from pictures.

Drawing and writing phonetically. 

Now...how this all relates to my revelation for the day: "I love my job." During Jenny's demo and thinking in the mind of a three to six year old, and then in the mind of a teacher of that age group. Again, these kids are awesome, they are wonderful, and they are the cutest little things :) But.....I do not believe I could do it. They intimidate me! I got overwhelmed just thinking about me doing these lessons in a little kiddo class. Sooo, I love my job. I love working in writing with my sixth graders and how they can express their ideas and thoughts, but still need assistance. I love that my kiddos can get their ideas on paper and just need some encouragement and coaching to make it "better" or more in-depth. I truly value preschool and elementary school teachers! They are awesome...just like their kiddos; but I think I'll stay in my 6th Grade World ;)

Until tomorrow....