good day teaching (teaching)

Today, things came together for me and my coteacher. I am the special education teacher in a collaborative team teaching classroom. My coteacher has taught for so many years and has completely integrated literacy concepts, classroom management approaches, and first grade scope and sequence into her thoughts that she kind of breaths teaching. She is so aware of everything that I am often amazed that I do not process so much of what I must be looking at when she redirects or corrects. For the past few weeks, I have felt like my instruction is detrimental for my students because that means it is time away from her. Today, I realized she and I are becoming a very good team.

A few moments of interactive writing and a seriously funny first grade joke made me realize all of this.

The children (or boys and girls, as I like to call them) were writing in their journals for the first time. Like the five-year-olds they are, this proved to be a very labor intensive process. Seeing them struggle and realizing that they did not have strategies to call upon created the need for a teachable moment. Although it should have happened before I sent them to write in their journals, I decided to write my own journal entry and model some things. I thought about the things I wanted to write, I sounded words out, I used my word wall to help me spell sight words, and remembered capitals and periods. I could not help myself and pushed two weeks of lessons into hardly any time at all. Then, MJ, my coteacher, took the pen and added to the entry. She highlighted the use of finger spaces. The kids loved it. And, they were so engaged in this lesson that was very far from well planned.

The very funny joke came after Spanish class. [You may have to be five to get it.] MJ picked them up as I tried to type something for the service providers on the computer next to the door. Standing at the door, she told them they would play a trick on me and sneak into the room. 26 children filed past my chair, into their seats, as quietly as they could. Basically, they snorted their way past me. MJ asked me where the class was and I was able to respond with appropriate confusion. When I turned around, the whole class broke into some of the best noise that I have heard in a long time.

I love it when my class can experience joy, like they did today. I love it when they put things together, like they did today. And, I think that MJ and I might complement one another better than I could have imagined, like we did today.