Donate Now Yesterday, M was reading Muggie Maggie by Beverly Cleary. In that story, the main character is learning to write in cursive, so parts of the text are printed in written cursive. He comes up to me and says, “Ms. Bennett, I can’t read this book.” Me: Why not? M: Because I don’t talk…

Donate Now Last night I had a dream that kind of served as a reality check for me. It was really quite strange, but the gist is that Scott and I ran into some random people wearing Phi Sigma Pi (our honors fraternity) shirts in the mall. I ran over to them and started talking…

Well, I’m still teaching second grade. My TFA colleague, Dave, stepped up and took the kinder position. He said, “I’d rather die, but I’m the only one who speaks Spanish so it makes sense. And that is true.” So, last Friday, at about 9:30, four new students entered my class. Yes, that would be in…

I finished my second week of teaching. In spite of the bad start, it didn’t end so badly. At least, not in terms of the kids. As we came in from afternoon recess, I noticed a slip of paper on my desk from our principal asking the second grade teachers to come for a short…

Does anybody remember that book where that kid Alexander has like the worst day that a 7 year old could ever possibly imagine? Well, yesterday was like that for me. I don’t know what was going on. The kids were out of control. They were blatantly disrespectful. They wouldn’t stop talking. They didn’t respond to…

Now that I’ve got a few minutes to myself, I thought I’d write about my students, and the highlights from week 1. I’ve got a good group of kids who like participating in class. Maybe a little too much. But, I like participation better than total silence, because then at least I know they’re getting…

It wasn’t until last night that I actually felt like a real teacher. For the first three or so days this week, I felt half like I was living in some surreal dream, and half like I was some kind of babysitter. Then, last night while I was at the gym, the feeling finally hit…