light at the end of the tunnel

The worst is behind me. I’m pretty sure about that. This week is a short week, to fit in parent conferences. That always helps. I will finally have an assistant teacher — hooray! She starts Tuesday, and I can’t wait. She was so awesome Read More...

life on the rollercoaster

Anyone reading this who is already a teacher (I know I have some fledgling teachers reading this blog, as well as some non-teachers) knows what teaching is like. Teachers are well-acquainted with the experiences of being bombarded by stimuli all day, Read More...

Wahhhh!

Alas, it was another difficult morning. Most of the hour I had before school started I was at a tech meeting in the computer lab, where we learned how to do a behavior screener on each child. I got all mine done — which was good — but only Read More...

knuffle bunny saves the day

Hooray for Mo Willems. I decided that September would be Mo Willems month in my classroom. Usually I have this “welcome to school” theme and I read all these books about school, but this summer I admitted to myself that I think all those books Read More...

when things don’t go well, i blame myself

Actually, things went okay today, on this, our eighth day of school. On Friday I passed out the Friday folders to the children as I was lining them up to go out in the hall to get their jackets for recess. They started opening their folders, dropping Read More...

new elephant & piggie book

i just saw on Mo Willems’ blog that he’s got a new Elephant and Piggie book coming out in October! I can’t wait to get my hands on it. Read More...

What children like to read most

There was an article today about what children read most often, listed by grade level. I was surprised by how prosaic the list was, and realized that these are the books that teachers (and children) are so familiar with, we hardly notice them. Green Eggs Read More...