These kiddos AMAZE me.

Well Hello, Almost October!
Wow...yeah, it's really ALMOST OCTOBER!  I'm realizing it is so easy to get caught up in the beginning of the year chaos and leave the 'ol blog behind.  I had all these great intentions of updating the blogs, both this one, our classroom one and my personal family blog.  Well...clearly that hasn't happened here!  My other blogs DO have a post written in mid-August commenting on how absent I would be for the next few months thanks to back to school mayhem.  Boy was i right! This post will be long...and possibly broken into several posts.  We'll see where it goes though!

Let's speed up to where we are today... Sept 28.  (I just want to say WOW again...almost October?!?! That alone probably deserves a big post about how it goes from Aug 1 to Sept 30 in a matter of minutes).   First off, I want to start off by mentioning how blessed I am to be where I am, doing what I love.  I really never knew how amazing teaching could be until this past year and so this year is almost like icing.  I love my building and the staff most of the time (gotta be honest).   God has placed me at my building for reasons I couldn't understand but am so thankful for right now.

This year I'm teaching a 1st & 2nd grade classroom. That's right...both grades...same time.  Everyone outside of the teaching world always asks "Wow, is that hard?" or "How do you teach both grades?"  My answer to both: Yes and it's tricky but I wouldn't change it at all.  I was talking to another teacher today about what a blessing it is to 1)loop with some of my 1st graders from last year but 2) to get to know 2nd grade curriculum which makes my teaching of 1st grade so much more powerful I feel.  I love the split.  Is it hard at times? ABSOLUTELY.  Have I been in tears a time or two? Yep.  Have I changed my schedule again, and again, and again? Ha - definitely.   Do I ever wish that I hadn't volunteered for the split? No way.  I am truly am enjoying the classroom dynamics as well as the challenges.  Now that the first 6 weeks(ish) are finished we are breezing through and making progress.

So back to the original purpose of this post. It never ceases to amaze me what these kiddos can do. You'd think that after 4 years (just 4 years? wow) that i'd have a good grasp of 1st graders. But nope...every year I push a little harder, go deeper and they keep right up with me. Sometimes even pushing me to places I didn't think they knew where they were going.   We created our Class Mission Statement within the first few weeks of the school year.  I was impressed with the thought they put into it...and they GET IT! That's the best part. THEY GET IT!  We started off by figuring out "who are we?" which lead to "what are we doing here?" followed up with "why are we doing that?"  And this is the final result.

Go ahead....say ahhhhh, because it is That Amazing.   We read it a couple times during the week and discuss how what we're doing at that very moment relates to their mission.
Like I said, these kiddos amaze me.