another chapter

There is a change for me next year in my career. In a lot of ways I am very ready to move on from being a Reading Recovery teacher. I found it quite challenging and at times depressing as I struggled each day to teach these kids and see slow and little progress. When they started succeeding and achieving it was incredibly rewarding but I am ready for a change and was overjoyed when my school decided to give me a Year 2 class in 2010.

I graduated recently and at the ceremony the handout had this quote on the back from Marie Clay, who developed the Reading Recovery program. It really resonated with me with how I felt, particularly the last 6 months, as I've questioned my abilities as a teacher when my kidlets weren't learning.

Teachers who work in an early literacy intervention should be given recognition for the work they do.
The task is not quite as exciting as teaching children of varied talents in a classroom. It is a job that carries more strain, and one's pupils will often have lower achievement than those of other teachers at the end of the year.
The school has to recognise that this person is very important and needs appropriate rewards for taking this task.
The response of these children may not be rapid, even when they are given a highly skilled and experienced teacher who uses special techniques.

I'm looking forward to the exciting, and quite daunting, role of class teacher. I'm thankful that I have the skills as a trained Reading Recovery teacher to implement strategies within a classroom setting to excel students in reading and writing. I'm not confident in any other key learning area but if nothing else my class will be fantastic readers!!