Celebrating Success

Being a teacher is a very challenging job for so many reasons, and sometimes it seems like I'm not making a big enough difference. Luckily, there are always those days when I see the difference I am making, even if only for a few students. Today was one of those days. I have a student in my class who started the year not knowing how to recognize, write, or say the sounds of any letters of the alphabet (he should have learned all of this last year in kindergarten). When he would write stories at the beginning of the year, he could only draw pictures and occasionally put a letter or two on his paper, often not corresponding with any sounds he was trying to write. Today during writing he wrote a whole story about superman going to a store, getting some candy, and taking some money out of his pocket to give a the lady at the store before flying away. He spelled all the words the best he could by sounding them out and didn't get discouraged when he didn't know how to spell something (previously a big road block and still a big road block for many students). For example, his story started like this: "Frst subrmn wnt to the str. Vn he gt cand..." (First, superman went to the store. Then he got candy...) I was so proud of his progress. Another girl in my class started the year as a good writer. She was writing stories that were 3-4 sentences long, but didn't have very much detail. Today she wrote a chapter book. It is 8 pages so far and she told me she still needs to write chapter 3. Awesome! I hope I can help the rest of my students make this much progress as well.