Musings of a 4th Grade Teacher

Time is flying! Is it really December? How did that happen?

Life is good. Life is wonderful.

I get my first new student tomorrow. I am excited. It brings my count back up to 33 where it was for most of the year. After Christmas break it will be back down to 32 students. I like having 32 students. 8 tables with 4 kids each. No odd one out.

They are a great group of kids. I gave an honesty quiz the other day. You know. The type of quiz where they hand it in, you grade it (but you don't mark anything and you don't tell them it's been graded), and then you hand it back for them to grade. They all passed. Except perhaps one.

My one bully girl is now friends with the girl she used to bully.

My students have worked with lots of sand and glitter without getting any of it on the floor, chairs, or even desks.

I have successfully managed to get most my little boys to tell me who they have a crush on. I had no particular reason to do that; I just wanted to know. They all told me, no questions asked, when I inquired.

My 4th graders are the very best class at every assembly. They do not talk to each other and sit on their pockets the entirety of the presentation.

I have been wearing my shortest pair of heels (3") to school on a regular basis in hopes that my feet will get used to them and I can start to wear some of my favorite pairs that are quite a bit taller than that.

We have half an hour for music twice a week and they love it. I start by playing 5 minutes of a classical music piece with the name and composer on the board. I quickly give a short overview of the composer and where he (no she's yet) is from. Then some of them get to say what they were thinking of during the music. I played an excerpt from Jupiter by Holst the other day. Many of my lovely students thought about aliens on another planet. I think their favorite so far was the Hungarian Rhapsody by Lizst. We are starting on the recorder. Those lessons are really to help me with patience.

I love teaching. People keep asking me if it was different than I thought or if I am starting to go crazy. It just feels to natural. I am definitely going to be bummed when it is summer vacation and I will not see my sweet students.