Up in the air

To be honest, I throw like a girl.  I can't really catch either (I've been known to duck).  But put me in the classroom and I can juggle with the best of them!

I have twenty students this year with the widest variance in abilities and readiness I've ever seen in one classroom.  I spend three hours every day juggling my students up in the air - desperately trying not to drop anyone and keep the momentum going forward.  I write little notes to myself all over the place:  A can't put the numbers in order, B's hand gets tired when we color the math sheet, C & D & E need to be screened for articulation problems, F wants harder homework, G's parents want a conference ASAP, etc.

At the end of each day I take my little notes and copy them into My Notebook.  My Notebook keeps me sane.  It is a paper record of all the things I need to remember about each individual child, but if I just  kept them in my brain it would probably explode.  OK not really.  If I didn't write things down in My Notebook, I would just forget them and not be able to do my job effectively.

The psychologist Lee Shulman compares the complexity of meeting the needs of your students during a normal teaching day to a physician "in the emergency room of a hospital during or after a natural disaster (p. 147 Waiting for 'Superman')."  I can't stand the sight of blood, so I think I'll stick to the craziness of teaching twenty adorable Kindergarteners.