As many of you know I began working last August as a teacher and a librarian at an international school here in Belo Horizonte. This has been a challenging and rewarding experience and has been completely worth it. Here are some highlights of my year:
- Putting a book into one of my 6th graders hands (Eighth Grade Bites from The Chronicles of Vladimir Tod series by Heather Brewer), which he didn’t return immediately after he moved on to the next book because one of his four brothers (a 9th grader) co-opted it. Then it still didn’t get returned. Which I couldn’t figure out until the 11th grade brother came in to pre-empt his other brothers on checking out the rest of the series because he had been reading the books when he could sneak them from his brothers. None of these brothers had checked out books to read for enjoyment since who knows when, if ever. It mostly made me happy because it was the 6th grade brother who influenced his older brothers.
- Setting a goal of 20 books in the second semester for my 6th grade English Language Arts students to read and watching many of them read at least that many or more. One student read over 40 books in just 16 weeks. In fact, he implied with a smile on his face that I might have been responsible for his grades falling a bit in other classes because he couldn’t stop reading when he left English class.
- Watching ELL 2nd graders K and C and ELL 1st graders H and W grow so much in their reading/English abilities this year. This is not my victory because their teachers (Ms. K and Miss R) deserve all the credit because of the individual instruction they gave these students, but I had the privilege of watching these students begin to check out more and more difficult books and to see them truly excited about reading in English.
- Hearing from one of the high school girls: “Miss, no one ever knew or cared about interesting library books for the older students until you got here.”
- Having my 9th grade students ask one day, “Miss, where is *title of book *?” and when I pulled it off the shelf, they dissolved into whispers and giggles. Then one of them piped up with another request, “Miss, where is *title of another book *?” and when I pulled it off the shelf the same thing happened. Whispers and giggles. I began to get suspicious. The third time they asked me for a book, I’m sure I had a confused look on my face, but I grabbed the book, handed it to them and heard one of them say, “15 seconds.” I demanded to know what is going on. They laughed and replied, “Miss, you know where EVERYTHING is.” They were timing me to see how long it took me to find books. Cute, huh?
- Reading the 10,000 word stories my 9th and 12th grade Creative Writing students completed in the last quarter of school. Their stories were not perfect but they were entertaining and several of them were exceptional. I was particularly proud of Ing. and K (one of the brothers mentioned in the first highlight above), both English Language Learners, for not only completing the assignment (a huge undertaking that they did NOT believe they were capable of back in August when I presented the syllabus for the year) but for also surprising me with well-paced stories full of detail, setting and characterization that proved they had internalized many of the things we had studied throughout the year.
- Reading NUMBER THE STARS by Lois Lowry aloud with the 5th graders during library class while they were in the middle of a government unit of inquiry. We asked questions, we researched the answers, we laughed, we held our breath, we cried. There is one moment toward the end of the book when I was reading with tears in my eyes and I glanced up to look at the students’ faces. The emoti Add a Comment