Wednesday, February 07, 2007

You Need My Job

Fifth graders are the best kept secret in teaching. There's the legendary sweetness of 4th graders - resulting in landslides of applications to teach that grade. Sixth graders are known to be smart and impressionable. So where's the press for the 5th graders?




Exactly! No one extolls the virtues of the 5th grader. So let it be me who says: they rock! They are sweet, and now, about halfway through the year, they are getting IT. They're becoming more insightful about themselves and their world. And they talk about it. In fact, they ooh and ahhh about it.

One kid is "getting to be a better reader," as he and his huge smile point out the multisyllabic word that he has just decoded.

Another formerly-reluctant reader leaves her book on my desk with a sticky note instructing me to "read from p.146 to the end of the book," in which the main character is radically altered and realizes it.

Yet a third, my needy little tantrum-thrower, slugs a classmate in the morning, swallows another session on "What other choices can you make when you get angry?," and comes to me in the afternoon with her new library book, When I get Mad, "cuz I have problems with my anger."

Seriously, you need my job! :)

2 comments:

jwm said...

No, I don't. I'm so glad that someone is doing it and enjoying it. My 4 year olds are great, but telling other peoples' kids what to do? Yikes!

I absolutely loved my 5th grade teacher. Only had her for 1/2 a year before she was hit in a car accident. She came back to visit.. but she was out for a very long time. Drive safe. I remember the day she came to visit rather vividly. Great lady.

Drive safe.

-JWM

Steve Stenzel said...

All I remember about 5 grade is having out priest come talk to us about "urges" and "petting."

Not my best year.