“I just got my final observation by Ms. Coen, and Grandma James wasn’t there so that made it a little interesting. It starts with Ryden snickering because I went to the trouble of putting real student names in the word problems. Each time I read the word problem out loud, he’d laugh when I came to someone’s name. I hurried up the lesson knowing ...

In the beginning of the year, the 1st and 2nd grade team wanted to go on one field trip per month. Our first field trip of the year came in May. We were scheduled to see the play, Knufflebunny: A Cautionary Tale, and despite our progress, I still feared my kids would be a spectacle. I imagined them in and out of their seats, yelling obnoxious ...

When spring came, I had my third of four observations, and this one was done by the principal, Franklin. It was unannounced, and I was doing a writing lesson at the time. As Grandma James circulated and handed out pencils, I sat down at the teacher table and had conferences with kids, one by one. I thought it went really well; I received 3.28 ...

By the end of February, Grandma told me her son was really sick, and she was going to leave for a few weeks to take care of him. I was by myself again, just like the fall when everything fell apart. But this was going to be good for me; I was leaning too heavily on her anyway. I relied upon her to do all things that could mess up a well-planned ...

Afternoons were always rough, and usually, I over-planned them, taking the kids endlessly from one failed activity to another. So in February I tried something different and I spent all of my planning time on one really engaging activity, making Martin Luther King, Jr. books. The book was about 10 pages long, and I copied enough for all the ...

Every day, I had demanded they work silently when I handed out their work. There were teachers who told me it was hard for 2nd graders to be completely silent while working. Even Grandma James questioned why I cared so much about silence, but I felt any chatter could only lead to a major breakdown, so I spent my most of my time hopelessly ...

I had already given up on being the superstar teacher I planned to be. That happened in the fall, when the class started getting worse, and I decided the best thing to do was quit. Now I had been job searching for two months, and my hope of escape was causing more anxiety instead of alleviating it. I had to accept that I wasn’t escaping; I had ...

My wife finally had my daughter 9 days late, early Saturday morning. I had taken that Friday off again, but this time even my wife wanted me to take it off. We spent all of Friday walking from one store to the next, preparing for the impending blizzard. First we walked to the local movie shop just in case we got snowed in, and then that evening ...

When I started journaling, it felt like my life was improving. Progress was slow, but it was going in the right direction, and that was all that was important to me. I convinced myself I didn’t need to seek outside help; my coping methods were working just fine. By now, I started to come to realize that journaling wasn’t going to solve all my ...

One of my more difficult kids was a boy named Campbell. In the beginning of the year, he was one of my favorites. He always came in with the same untucked uniform shirt with patches of dirt all over it. His old shoelaces were frequently untied, and it became clear to me that he had no idea how to tie them. But, he usually had a smile on his ...