Two days ago, my supervisor of the past three years dropped in for an unannounced observation. Instantly I felt nervous. My worries quickly washed away, however, when she sent me a message explaining how much she loved my class and all the positive things she noticed. So, why did I still feel defeated the rest of the day? Why did I still feel like, in spite of her praise, everything I was doing was still not good enough?
It's because every day when I go to my guided reading table to meet with small groups of students, there's always one set of eyes looking as hopeless as a fish out of water, one voice shouting, "I can't do this!"--before I've even had a chance to explain what he's going to do. For the most part, I have excellent students this year--bright, eager, and well-behaved. But these pleading eyes and voices haunt me even in times of celebration.
The class she observed is the one I feel the least comfortable about because for the first time in my almost ten years of teaching, I have a group of first graders--not to mention six second graders who didn't learn what they should have last year. First grade is such a pivotal year because it's when kids learn more than any other time how to read and write. At first, I was excited about all the progress I would see and was up for the challenge. Now, eight weeks later, I have a newfound respect for kindergarten and first grade teachers.
I never realized how difficult it is to teach a student how to read and write. Sure, I've worked with students who had no literacy before, but that was different. Those kids were already in high school or middle school, so they had to learn fast in order to pass their classes and graduate. Many of them also knew their first language well enough that the skills we learned in English could easily transfer over. But these first and second graders have no concept of putting letters together to make words--in any language! They can read the sound cards without skipping a beat, but when it comes time to actually using those sounds to read the words on a page, they freeze up, waiting for someone else to say it first.
There are small victories, but for the most part I feel like the students are not progressing fast enough--certainly not at the rate I had expected at the beginning of the year. Today was particularly difficult. I was listening to a boy read a level A book (the lowest level possible). Even though he tested accurately at this level a few weeks ago, the only words he could read on his own were the and to. For the rest of the time we struggled through it, with him calling out words that looked nothing like the ones on the page and me pleading with him to "look at the picture" and "sound it out", all the while trying to still my urge to just say the word for him. By the time he finally finished, the boy next to him had read three books on his own, and it was time to go. Certainly no time left to explain to him what I mean when I say "sound it out" or teach him some of the many words he didn't know.
During the same class, the students were practicing the words that will be on their spelling test tomorrow on white boards. They are in second grade, so I started out giving them second grade words--and most of them failed miserably. So, I changed to a list from mid-first grade. Now these words are too easy for them--except one student. While the boys next to him effortlessly wrote the words, this boy just stared at me, as if waiting for me to write the words for him. I emphasized the sounds one at a time--"ttttttt---eeeeee----nnnnn". Occasionally he would exclaim "oh!" while a flicker of recognition flashed over his face, and write l...or b...or any number of other letters that had nothing to do with the sound I was making. When I changed my approach and started asking, "which letter makes the tttttt sound?", he still had no clue--even though he knows all of the letter sounds like the back of his hand.
When I was training for the marathon several years ago, everyone kept telling me, "get ready for the 'wall' at mile 20." I feel like I've come to a wall in teaching these kids. I've done everything I know how to do, yet they still seem to be stuck. Every step forward seems to bring two steps backward, and every new word they encounter in a book is like a hurdle they have to jump. I will keep looking to my fellow teachers for wisdom and inspiration, and to God for patience and understanding. Let's hope that the next time I write I can talk about all the great gains they made instead of all the frustrations I feel.
