A big ride

There are two and a half hours left of the school year, and this teacher is exhausted and ready for some rest. The past couple weeks have been a whirlwind of special activities, summer birthday treats, research report presentations and costumes, lots of noise and talking, reminders to myself to take deep breaths, and a fine layer of glitter coating the classroom from one girl's poster.

This year has not been easy, but I still find myself feeling melancholy over the end of the year. As I reflect back over the year, I realize there are many moments I could have and should have been a better teacher.

I definitely have had my fair share of teacher fails. Like the time I had a student go out in the hallway to finish an assignment and I completely forgot about her for the entire reading lesson... Oops! Or the time that one student was eating Nutella with a spoon during class. Or just this week when I found out from another teacher that the girls in my class were purposefully putting glitter (from the aforementioned poster) on their faces and in their hair.

Sometimes I think I picked the wrong battles to fight. (But once I picked a battle, I needed to win.) Sometimes I was too impatient. Sometimes I didn't show my students how much I cared about them. Sometimes students didn't learn what they were supposed to learn.

Despite all of my fails, though, God's grace and faithfulness have seen us through, and my students are ready to graduate from third grade.

I asked my students to fill out a survey, and I was proud of them for taking it seriously and giving me honest feedback. And I thought you might appreciate some of their responses as well.

What is one thing Miss Weaver did to show she cared about you? 

• Helped me with my work 
• Said "you almost got it" when I was doing a paper
• She let me take a piece of pizza home from school. 
• Spent money to give us Christmas gifts
• When you say you are hurt and she puts a band-aid on you. 
• If someone doesn’t have an eraser she gives it to us.
• When I raised my hand she came to me. 

I'm surprised at the simplicity of some of these answers. Take heart, teachers and parents! It's the small things we do every day that show our children we love them. 

What advice do you have for next year's third graders? 

I like the straightforwardness of some of their answers: (So they have been listening to me repeat these things all year long.)

• Listen and stay in your seat. 
• Be good and don’t fight. 

The essence of the whole year, I guess:

• If you behave she will be nice, but if you disobey she will get strict.
• A couple of times she gets a little strict sometimes.

These just make my teacher heart happy: 

• Be prepared to have a lot harder work.
• Get ready to learn a lot. 
• Try to make a good relationship with the teacher.
• Be calmer. 
• You should always do your best work because one time I got a point taken off because of sloppiness.
• Get ready! You’re in for a big ride. 

It has been a "big ride." As always, I'm excited to see how God continues to work in their lives, because thankfully third grade is not the end of the ride!