Wednesday, February 23, 2011

School Days

Being an educator, I am constantly thinking back to my days in school. I think about the teachers and lessons that impacted me the most, and I try to emulate those same strategies and techniques in my classroom in hopes of inspiring my students. I also think about the classes and teachers that made me want to drive a nail through my nose to make the pain of the class seem less intense. Thankfully those memories are far less than the good ones. Here are just a few of my greatest memories from my school years.

Kindergarten- We learned the alphabet and letter sounds with the letter people. I will never forget the day Mr. T with Tall Teeth knocked on the door of that portable!!! It was like magic!

1st grade- My teacher had a "busy box." After we were finished with our work we could go through all of her extra worksheets and get as many as we wanted. The little teacher in me loved it!

3rd grade- We made a life sized model of the inside of our bodies. We cut the body out of a refrigerator box, then colored and glued down the organs. I kept mine til it fell apart.

4th grade- I read my first chapter book.... Dr. Doolittle

6th grade- I started playing trumpet and had my very first solo, "I'll Be Home For Christmas." Here is where I met my favorite teacher Mrs. Garrett...of course she was the band director!

9th grade- Geography with Coach Fisher. I loved every second of my map projects! Still to this day I get all the Geography questions right on Jeopardy!

12th grade- Service learning with Mrs. Johnson's 3rd grade class at BSES, Mrs. Greene and our Media Communications Class created a promotional video for the school, and Senora Farr let me make my first bulletin board and it was all in Spanish.

I am sure there are LOTS more, but of course as time has passed I can't remember them all. I constantly asks my former students about things we did in my room just to see if they remember. I asked one of my first year students not long ago, and he replied..."We made a lot of bag puppets!" After I quit laughing, I had to admit that he was right. I think we made 5 throughout the year in order to practice retelling stories.

I hope that you have great stories from school too. If you have one you would like to share I would love to hear it. Maybe your story can be used in my classroom to make a difference in the lives of my students.

1 comment:

Megan said...

I guess my best story is that I was bored to tears in second grade, so my teacher let me do an independent project on anything I wanted. I chose the Titanic. I read several books and wrote and illustrated my report. One of the pages is framed in my mom's laundry room!