Practice Beyond Perfection

The first week of teaching is over, and I have discovered one important, undeniable fact: I am nowhere near perfect at teaching. So when our sessions this week revolved around "practicing beyond perfection," all I could think of was, "Don't we need to worry about getting to perfection before we can practice beyond it?" Just a thought.

So...I practiced. I practiced writing my lesson plans. I practiced not getting enough sleep so that I could revise my lesson plans. I practiced teaching fifth graders. And in the midst of all of this, I practiced sanity.

Although, I'm not sure practicing sanity worked...because even when my students gave me the biggest attitude I have ever dealt with, even when they would not stop laughing during class, and even when one of them kept nodding off on Tuesday morning, I realized how much I love these kids. I love them, and I hardly know them. I'm not sure how sane that is.

For the past week, we have also practiced giving kids tests. We gave them diagnostics to see where they all are with reading, spelling, and math. We give them assessments after each lesson.

When we tested one student's reading, we also practiced fighting back tears and anger. His reading level is so low that we do not even have cards to test him. We're not even sure he can recognize all of the letters of the alphabet. And the most infuriating part is that he's in fifth grade! He is ten years old and he cannot even read on the first grade level. How did this happen?

Of course, not all moments of teaching are heartbreaking. On Thursday I realized my lesson on the main idea of a story had fallen flat, so I spent all night rewriting Friday's lesson plan to hammer in the concept. After talking to Bobbie, my insightful aunt and teaching hero, I decided the reason they weren't getting my lesson was because it didn't apply to anything in their lives. Why should they care about outer space when most of them do not get enough food every day? So I spent Thursday night writing sentences and paragraphs that included the kids' names. On Friday, as I was passing these out to students, smiles crossed their faces. One student raised her hand, "Ms. Block! You wrote about US!" I said, "Of course I did. I realized you guys don't care about outer space, and neither do I. What I care about is all of you, so that is what we are going to read about today." Needless to say, they learned how to find the main idea of a paragraph, and I learned the main idea of teaching: showing kids that you care.

I haven't been the only one practicing this week. Before lunch every day, I have had the class practice lining up in a certain amount of time. (Yes, I time them.) At the end of the class on Friday, one student asked if we were going to practice lining up again today. I said, "Of course! Can someone tell me what the fastest time has been this week?" Everyone yelled, "Twenty seconds!" "Oh! Raise your hands!" One student raised her hands and gave me the answer. "Exactly. 20 seconds. I think you can make it in 18 seconds today, what do you think?" "Yeah! Yeah!" "All right," I said. "Let's do this. Remember, you have to be perfectly quiet to line up." Silence. I dismissed people to line up.

This time, they made it in 16 seconds. "Congratulations! You all made it in 16 seconds!," I said. "I'll see you on Monday!" "Wait," said one student. "We won't see you again today?" "No," I said. "You have Ms. Munford and Mr. Connor next block." "But! But!" said several members of the class. "Oh, you'll have fun. Have a great weekend! I'll miss you guys!"

As all of them waved back to me, I realized that practicing to perfection and beyond--whether it's writing lesson plans or lining up for lunch--is not such a bad thing after all.