Decisions

Decisions.  It is that time of year, where as one chapter is about to close, another one is about to open.

Tomorrow, my baby turns 5.  With that, we enter a new phase in our lives.  I will have a kindergartner in the fall.  A kindergartner, who will be coming to school with me instead of going to our neighborhood school.  It will be interesting to see how we each learn to adapt to having one another.

For the first time in six years, I will not loop with my students.  This has been a difficult decision for me.  I LOVE looping and have spent over half of my career as a looping teacher.  But, I realize that I am the minority at my school.  Most teachers do not loop.  Sometimes because I loop, I limit the choices in placement for children within the grade level I teach.  Many times, I have to adapt to curricular decisions that I did not participate in the planning of but must implement and teach.  I have been able to overcome these challenges in the past.

Lately, though, I feel that I need to help with the success of our school and students in a new way.  I would like to be a teacher leader at our school. I would hope that some members of our staff already see me as one.  One day, I would like to work with students who would benefit from an additional year of kindergarten or first grade in a transitional grade setting.  But that is all in the future.

So for now, I will be a kindergartner teacher. I will focus on learning the Common Core, implementing a new language arts adoption and being a mommy of a kindergartner.