Goodbye First Grade

As the school year wraps up and plans are underway for the upcoming school year, teaching assignments must be made, involuntary transfers placed, and new positions need to be posted.  It's like putting a puzzle together; the puzzle looks one way in the spring and then changes are made again to the puzzle pieces during the summer break.

I have been feeling completely exhausted this school year with my first graders for some odd reason. I felt I should go to an older grade, perhaps second or third grade.  As the puzzle was being put together the spot that opened up was a fourth grade position, the one grade I have not taught since my student teaching over twenty years ago.

My heart dropped when my principal came to let me know how the puzzle pieces were being fit together this spring.  I couldn't pin point what made me so immediately apprehensive  about going to fourth grade.  When the darling smiles on my first graders entered my classroom the tears rolled down my eyes as I realized that I would soon be clearing out my first grade curriciculum and start counting down the days these petite smiles would beam at me as I greet them each morning.  That was it.  I will miss these little arms that glue themselves instantly around my growing waistline every morning, the little fingers that endlessly tap at my forearm to instantly capture my undevided attention, the tiny voices pleaded endlessly for a bandaid for their invisible paper cuts.

Ideally, everything is mapped out before school dismisses for summer with minor changes.  Yet, I have never returned from a summer break without a major mouth dropping announcement being made, that is, a teaching assignment.  Someone moves, decides to stop teaching, switches schools or makes a radical change in position.

Now that it has been announced to parents that I will be teaching fourth grade, parent request have been made, and the first draft of class lists have been posted I have resolved to say my adieu to my love of first grade.

- Bethany