Validation

Well shoot. There I go, saying I hate my job all this week, and then I have a day like today where all I can say is that I love my job. Well...sort of.

So, I finished my parent/teacher conferences tonight. Nowhere near as scary as I thought it was going to be. It was funny, last night during one of my breaks in my schedule of conferences, my principal popped in to see how things were going. She asked if I felt validated as a teacher after meeting with these parents. And I do! It's so crazy. Here I am, a 23-year-old woman entrusted with the education of 24 pre-teens. These parents all respected me and my opinions and the grades and scores that I gave my students. They asked me for my professional opinion on how to help their kids. I forget that technically I'm qualified to do that. Uhh...that's so weird.

It also made me realize part of why I wanted to be a teacher though. So the way I ran my conferences is I started off by handing the parent and student a copy of their report card. I had them look it over and then we discussed and questions or concerns that they had. After talking about that we did a "Student Education Plan" which is a district-wide thing. We talked about the kid's accomplishments and strengths, areas for improvement, and then we set a goal or two for them to reach before the next report card. And I really stressed to my kids that I'm here to help them succeed. I'm here to do whatever I can to make sure that they are learning and achieving all that they are capable of, because they all have such great potential. The way I felt as I was telling each kid this reminded me of the cute little pre-teacher Ms. Griffiths just starting her program at BYU, thinking I could change the world, one student at a time. Since actually teaching I've felt very little of that. It's so overwhelming and trying to meet the needs of 24 students is crazy. I've been kind of discouraged, thinking, "Why the heck did I want to do this? This is a terrible job." And yes, there is still lots that I could complain about having to do with all the politics and everything of being a teacher, but we won't go there tonight. I guess I just realized that deep down inside I do love what I do. I love those kids and I want them to reach their potential.

Enough semi-mushy stuff. There were some great and some funny moments to share from today.

We played a math game today called "Grudgeball" that the kids love. Basically each team has 10 x's up on the board. Each team at a time has a turn to correctly solve a math problem and if they get it correct they get to erase 2 x's from any of the other teams. It was so fun seeing the kids all engaged and excited, even it was to be rude and erase x's from a certain team. I had some of my kids who have a hard time staying interested tell me that they loved it and I'm pretty sure they'll be begging to play it again.

Another thing we did was for vocabulary I had the kids write either a vocabulary word or the definition on a piece of paper. Then we played snowball with them. They crumpled them up, threw them, and then picked up a new snow ball and had to find the person with the match. Well, the funny thing is that I let them throw their snowballs at me. They loved it. And I thought it was funny how much they loved it.

Last thing to share, has to do with some wonderful 6th grade boy humor. Oh, and it was me who had the sense of humor of a 12-year-old boy. In science we've been learning about the Solar System. We were doing an activity where the kids had to write a fact that they knew for each of the planets. One of my boys came up to me and asked me, "Ms. Griffiths, does Uranus have rings?" I stared at him for a moment, trying to decipher if this was a trap. It wouldn't surprise me with my kids. Even though I pronounce it Yur-uh-nus, most of them still love to claim that Ur-anus is their favorite planet. But I had a serious debate in my head about if this kid was being serious or if he was messing with me. Then I realized that it's impossible for this kid to hide any emotion, so since he asked me with a straight face, he was being serious. I answered his question and as he walked away, I chuckled to myself, "Does Uranus have rings...? Hehehe..." Don't judge. That's what happens when your only friends that you hang out with are a class of 11- and 12-year-olds.