Dear Young Teacher Down The Hall,

Now that I have immersed myself into the wonderful world of blogging, I'm finding that I have WICKED writers block. I've read other blog posts in attempt to determine what direction I would like this to go in, but I am still undecided. Then I had a thought.

I would just ask my own 19 bloggers what they thought I should write about. I explained my situation, how I too was in school, learning, doing homework and having my own blog. Instantly and obviously, they all wanted the link so they could keep tabs on their teacher. I said before I could give them the link, they would have to give me some ideas of topics to write about. Here is the list we came up with:

When you were little and wanted to be a teacher

What we are learning in math (multiplying fractions- thrilling posts those ought to be!)

An opinion piece about whether or not I like zoos

I thanked them endlessly for all of their great ideas, and promised to give them the link once my blog got going. Now that I've written about this process, I'm not so sure I'll be sharing any blogs with my little dears. 

When I got home later that night, a teacher friend from across town had a link posted on her Facebook page, titled What Students Remember Most About Teachers. Now usually, I would keep scrolling down my news feed, seeing if any more of my friends had gotten engaged, or there were any new baby and puppy pictures. (Oh how Facebook has changed since our college days.) This time though, I did not scroll any further. I clicked and read this blog post from beginning to end. As I finished reading I knew I would make my next post a reflection of this short and sweet post. 

Here is the link, for your own reading pleasure: What Students Remember Most About Teachers

"Excellence is more readily attained by being. Being available. Being kind. Being compassionate. Being transparent. Being real. Being thoughtful. Being ourselves."

Sometimes as the days fly by, and the weeks all blur together I think about everything that all of us have done in Room 16. We share our daily highs and lows, we learn side by side while using our new Chromebooks, and we laugh (and sometimes cry) during parts of our current read aloud, Wonder. Do they know how much I care? I think so. When the author of this blog post writes about how being is how you attain greatness, a certain situation comes to mind.  

In my district there is a Vertical Math Committee that looks at what happens during math Pre-K through 12th grade. Well, the 18 members of that committee happened to be visiting my classroom to observe an hour of math. I heard the news and was shaking in my boots. Why me? Why did my classroom get chosen? Instead of keeping this all in, I decided as soon as I found out to share all of my thoughts with my 19 friends. To make a long story short, I told them everything. How I was afraid I was going to mess up, how I didn't know what I should wear, and how I had no clue how 18 more adults would fit into our classroom! (Turns out they came in groups of 6 so the space situation worked out just fine.) But I also made this a lesson. How anyone could do their very best at anything for 1 hour. Even though I was terrified, and it wasn't ideal for me, I was going to make the best of it and grow from it. Growth happened. My transparency and honesty helped more than I thought. Having shared my feelings with my students, as soon as those groups of people entered my classroom, all I saw were the 19 sets of eyes that are on me every day. We laughed, we learned, and at the end of that intense hour, we had a HUGE group hug, celebrating not my success, but OUR success. We did it. 

To wrap  it up, this post spoke to me. I am transparent, I am real, and I hope every day that what I do, and who I am are the things that my students will remember about me.