First Year Teaching

I spent the last week of my summer rearranging desks, making name tags, labeling books, and practicing writing "Miss Montambault" in my neatest hand writing on the board. Every desk had two perfectly sharpened #2 pencils, a school agenda, and a school folder placed strategically on the left side, and a StoryTown text book on the right side. I even bought, hemmed, and hung curtains. I was ready.

Days later my first class arrived. Twenty-one little bodies scooted into my classroom. Twenty-one children looking me in the eye silently begging me to teach them, accept them, love them.

While teaching often feels like a series of codes (PLC's, DRA's, IEP's, PPT's, SRBI), I have come to learn that while data collection is important and drives instruction, it is my students who drive me. My students are the reason I get up every day and come into school with well thought out lesson plans. My students are the reason I stay late on Fridays decorating the room, and making colorful morning messages. My students are the reason I spend $1,980 per graduate class in hopes of connecting with other educators that will help me provide resources and materials that will create an exciting and engaging learning environment.