distinctly uncomfortable, I began setting up my classroom for the day. I tried making conversation with Anne a couple more times, but she didn’t respond, so eventually I gave up and concentrated on organizing the bookshelves, putting my kids’ work into their folders, and writing the day’s objectives on the board.
My first evaluation had been with Adriana López, a fifth grade teacher who’d been a mentor of mine since I’d started at Adair Elementary five years ago. She’d always given me great feedback, and I enjoyed having her in my room, getting a chance to get more pointers from her. I hadn’t stressed about that eval and had been happy with the results.
Then Anne had gotten ahold of the report and declared it suspect. Apparently, Adriana had rated me too highly, and allowed our personal relationship to color her judgement. If you asked me, it was Anne whose objectivity was in question, but as my principal, she had the authority to insist that she be the one to perform my spring evaluation.
Needless to say, I was not looking forward to today, but I was grateful when the bell finally rang and my kids began to file into the room. Some asked me about the homework from last night, others bubbled over with stories from the playground, and a few of the quieter ones smiled shyly and went right to their seats.
I told people I liked teaching because I liked helping people, and that was true. But there was a more selfish reason I liked it, too.
It was impossible to be in the classroom, fully focused on my kids, and still be worried about my own problems. Teaching made my personal issues fade into the background. It quieted the voice in the back of my mind that endlessly narrated all the ways I didn’t measure up.
It was, frankly, a relief, and I craved the chance to get out of my own head for six hours a day.
I closed the door after my last student entered and turned back to the class with a smile on my face. A smile that faded when I realized Anne was standing right next to me, accompanied, as always, by her clipboard.
“Is that your standard morning procedure?” she asked, her voice once again cool and dispassionate. “To allow your students to roam through the halls unattended until they reach your classroom?”
“Unattended? Roam through—Anne, we have a schedule for which teachers are on door duty in the mornings. You have to know that, for God’s—Pete’s sake. I’m out front on Tuesdays and Thursdays. And they’re not unattended, either, there are always two teachers who—”
She turned away before I could finish reminding her of the procedure she’d approved at the beginning of the year. I inhaled deeply, reminded myself that she was the one holding all the power, and exhaled. I just had to get through today.
Luckily, my kids knew the routine by this point in the year, so they’d already turned in their homework and begun working on silent reading or the writing prompts I’d left on the board. After that, we all gathered in a circle on the carpet at the front of the room to do our morning meeting.
Some people might have thought third graders were too old for that, and would rebel against being treated like little kids. And sure, nine-year-olds could be a little sassy, but I found that when you modeled respect and listening, they blossomed under the attention, and treated each other with the same care.
I liked giving everyone a chance to share something good that had happened to them, and to talk about our goals for the day as a group. Our morning block was reading and writing, so we worked through whole-group reading and talked about what to do when encountering new vocabulary words.
I had to redirect one of my more rambunctious kids, Dustin Leeds, a few times, but we’d worked out a hand signal to use so I didn’t have to break the flow of the lesson. Dustin had struggled a lot with reading when the year began, and we’d spent time working on what to do when he got upset. He’d actually suggested the hand-signal himself, tapping his left shoulder with his index finger, and he smiled and nodded when I used it.
After the lesson, my students broke into stations at different tables and I sat with a smaller group of kids doing more hands-on reading work. Clara Freeman and Jamie Nguyen were each in groups playing