Any teacher who claims to have “mastered the art of teaching” is 1) definitely lying and 2) probably not a great teacher.

The reality is that we, as teachers, are constantly growing and developing. Each year, we get a new group of kids. New learning styles. Likes/dislikes. Triggers. Family members. Preferred reinforcements. New everything. Sure, we may get better at some things. Like our organization systems. Or we finally nailed down how we want a specific procedure to look like in the classroom.

But, the reality is, every year is different. It’s gotta be. You’re working with a whole new set of kiddos. And, if you’re a teacher or a parent or anyone who works with kids in any capacity, you KNOW that something that may work with ONE of your kids definitely doesn’t work with another.

This year, for me, is definitely going to be a huge learning experience. I’m coming from a “Resource” and “Co-Teaching/Inclusion” background. Most of the kids I have worked with in the past qualified for special education services because of a specific learning disability. This year, I’m working with students that have more significant needs. Kids that need completely modified content.

The first two weeks were kind of a jolt for me. Because I realized just how much I didn’t know. I was unequipped and inexperienced. I was used to teaching kids how to read. How to find the main idea in a passage. How to write a paragraph. And now, I’m working with some kiddos who can’t identify letters. Kiddos who have very limited communication. Who need support in adaptive, life skills.

This is an entirely different ballgame. So I’m having to shove my past experiences aside and try to figure out how to best serve the kids that I’ve got this year. I have so much to learn and I know this isn’t going to happen overnight. But, I have to celebrate the small successes along the way.

Today felt like a success with one of my little ones.

And I wanted to document it here so I can come back and re-read this when I’m feeling discouraged.

One of my babies has been really challenging to work with. (He’s the one I wrote about on my Facebook page).

Everything is just so much more difficult for him. Speaking. Learning. Following directions.

So, by the time I see him at 1:30pm, he’s gone through so much already that trying to work with him can be near impossible.

I can point to a letter “f,” tell him the sound the letter makes, and have him repeat it back to me.

This, he is able to do.

But when I ask him to do it again after 5-10 seconds, he’s unable to do it. He struggles with retaining information. And generalizing from one place to the next.

And, while we’ve been strapped with curriculum and evidence-based interventions to use with our kids, none of it feels appropriate for this little one who absolutely cannot sit for 45 minutes and repeatedly “touch the sound, say the sound” over and over again.

For the past few weeks, he has been resistant to anything letter or number related. Understandably. If things are difficult and people keep shoving the things in your face, I, too, would probably shut down.

So, today, we experimented with something new.

I took a post-it, wrote the letter, ‘m’ on it, and modeled walking around the room with my post-it in one hand, finding the letter “m” on posters, pointing to it with my other hand and saying, “mmmmm” each time I touched the letter.

I didn’t know if he was going to be super into it.

But, his eyes got big and I could tell he was excited about the prospect of learning while ALSO getting to be out of his seat and moving around.

We decided to take it to the halls.

And, boy oh boy, did this kid have a freaking ball.

Every time he found another “m” on a sign or a poster in the hallway, he jumped up and looked back at me to make sure I tallied it up on another post-it.

He was freaking pumped by the time we got back to his classroom. And seemed genuinely excited to tell his classroom teacher that he went on a hunt for the letter “m.”

We practiced saying the sound one more time before I left and then I put the post-it on his desk.

I asked his teacher if she would check in with him – one final time before dismissal – to see if he could remember the sound the “m” makes. And, when I followed up with her at the end of the day, she said, “Not only did he remember the sound, but he also pulled out another paper with a capital ‘M’ and said the sound again.

It almost feels silly to put this out there.

Because, with all the cool, Pinterest-y ideas out there to help with letter identification, this seems like a super ghetto, thrown-together-spontaneously kind of idea (which it was).

But, it was a win.

Because, though the outcome was small and, heck, he may not remember that letter tomorrow, I found something that he was excited about. And it wasn’t dinosaurs. It was letters.

I have so much more to learn.

My little babies are teaching me so much.

And are constantly reminding me that I will never, ever, “master the art of teaching.”

Because there is always room to grow.

Question of the Day:

• What’s one lesson that your child or your student has taught you this year?