9 Days!

This weekend was great, wonderful and relaxing.  I am so blessed to have family, friends and a boyfriend who love me and restore my sanity.  I would not be able to do this job without each and every one of you.  Thank you all. 

With that said...it's time to bring my mind back from the relaxation and into focus.  I have 9 days!   9 days!  I really don't know where the summer has gone, and I am feeling really overwhelmed that in 9 days I will need to make the decision if my 21 students are ready for 3rd grade.  I do not believe that any of them deserve to be retained.  Our job as educators is to provide quality education for our children year after year...because they deserve the best.  There was never a year where I feared not passing...but that is a reality for too many of our students in the Delta.  We know the statistics about students who retain and how it is correlated to future graduation and incarceration rates.  We know that students who fail one grade are significantly more likely to fail again.  I feel the pressure of these statistics on my back, and I can't help but feel tremendously guilty that we as adults have failed these kids.  

There are 21 students in my classroom this summer and more students throughout the school and the Delta who have not received the help at school or at home that they deserve.  It is not the child's fault.  We have failed them, and that makes me feel sick some days.  As a teacher who has had to swallow retaining 7 students throughout my 3 years, I know my place in these statistics.  I feel the guilt of not having pushed those 7 students harder during my 180 days with them.  I feel the anger of being trapped in a system that was not effectively run for so long.  I feel the bitterness toward parents who I judged for not "doing enough" for their kids.  I feel it all.  But most of all, I feel saddened.  I feel sad that so many students in the Delta and across the country are not receiving the education I was so lucky to have.  I feel sad that most of my students will be limited to the experiences within a 30 miles radius of Marks, Mississippi.  I feel sad that I am not able to help them all.  

So where do we go from sad?  How do we get out from the guilt and the sadness that can overshadow the rest of the reality in the Delta?  We need to remember the other side of the coin.  My students are capable.  They are eager, and they are ready for me to give them everything I can.  My students are loving and willing to be loved.  They are passionate when I am passionate.  They are ready for the challenges I set before them if I am ready to lead them there.  Am I ready to be the leader of my classroom for the next 9 days to push these children as far as possible?  Am I passionate about giving them everything I have so that the system does not fail them once again?  Am I focused on the goal so I can keep my students focused on the goal?  If the answer is "yes" to those 3 questions, then we are ready to prove what's possible in the next 9 days!

I need to remember why I'm here:  For the students.  With that in mind, here are my next steps for the week in order to maximize student learning and my own effectiveness:
1.)  Revise schedule to add more Read Well time with a focus on fluency because that's what my students really struggle with.
2.)  Give Mrs. Pryor and Mrs. Wilborn more fluency passages and focus on graphing so students can see their own progress.
3.)  Continue to communicate and invest students in Read Well and math goals because when they understand and embrace the goals, they are more accountable for reaching it.  
4.)  Improve centers to be pushing them with Fry's phrases and sentences writing.  Also, revamp Math centers to work on place value skills and triple digit addition and subtraction with regrouping.  Focus on partner share and check.  
5.)  Remain diligent about homework.  Send home additional reading passages for those students who didn't pass on Friday and word lists to practice.  
6.)  Create flashcards with commonly missed words from the unit 11 and unit 12 tests to review as we walk in the line or wait for lunch/bathroom.  Let's maximize that learning time!
6.)  Instill a sense of possibility in my kids that we can not only reach our class goals but exceed them!  When I believe this, they will believe it!

The next 9 days are going to be busy and hectic, but I know we can achieve our goals.  Those 21 students passing to third grade (and the idea of the beach at the end of July...haha) are my motivation and I won't stop until we get there!  :)