Cotton, dairy cows, and children

A student's magic paper - black paint scratched to show the crayon beneath.

Everyone's favorite question to ask me is how I like teaching. Let me tell you, I dread that question - because I never know how to answer it. I think I've finally decided on one word: Unexpected. No positive or negative connotations attached, simply unexpected.

The sight of cotton baled in truck size loads or the smell of a large dairy farm are things I never expected from Arizona. It just never fit into my image of my new home. But in the town where I teach, these are an everyday occurrence. Along with my classroom - from everything I'd heard, I thought my class would be full of children who barely spoke English and who were years behind grade level. Not true. We are well into the second quarter of the school year and I suppose it is about time I share more about my class...

I teach 28 second graders who are incredibly diverse in their background. I have a handful of students who still read at a kindergarten level to those reading at 3rd, almost 4th grade. One cannot write his name without a model to copy while another knows her entire name in cursive and practices at every chance.

Some of my students get into books after a test.

They love the chance to relax and free read -

and I love the quiet sounds of pages being turned.

These children are incredibly thirsty for knowledge and even more so for attention from me. They are more frustrating and aggravating than I ever could have imagined - and if you knew me as a child, you know I have a good idea of what kind of emotions a child can come up with at any moment. Sometimes they tend to scream, kick the tables and walls, cry over the size of their cookie portion, roll their eyes at me or complain about the work. And yet, they come in early every morning to help set up the classroom, want to meet the mysterious Mr. White, and write in their journals how much they love me and think my class is the best ever. Like I said, frustrating!

I'll admit, there are days (emphasis on the plural) when I don't know how I will manage to get through the rest of the day or just want to give up and not go back. Chaos and stress reign and I am s l o w l y learning how to deal effectively with this and be more efficient. I have days where I actually feel like they were excited about a subject and learned something. Like the time I graded a test and realized they achieved a 96% class average - amazing!!! The one common thread of all my days is I come home exhausted. I never expected to be so drained from my job. I never expected to feel the ups and downs all within one lesson or day. I never expected it to be hard in this way - a way I can't really describe to anyone who is not a teacher. I think I didn't really know what to expect.

We spend most of our days doing reading and math, with some science or social studies thrown in occasionally. A lot of time is spent on behavior management and figuring out how to not waste learning time or distract Ms. White. The class is chatty beyond what I expected (payback maybe?) and we talk about respect frequently. My favorite part of the week is when we do art. We don't have art at my school so it's up to each teacher to incorporate it as they see fit. I do an hour of actual art instruction each week. We mixed paint to find out about secondary colors, learned about positive and negative space, have made our own "magic" paper, and are now starting a drawing unit. Many of the students lack creativity and I am determined to give them every opportunity to think outside the box. You should have seen them doing blind contour drawings - papers over their pencil to hide what they were doing as they attempted to draw flowers - from sight, not mind.

Our color wheels we painted hanging from the classroom ceiling. They had never mixed paints before!

Unexpected.