When the Sun Shines Good Things Happen

My last post highlighted some humor on behalf of one of my gifted and talented (GT) students. It is much easier to be an impassioned teacher with them because they tend to validate what I do more often than other students I have.

These "other students" are definitely my remedial reading kids. When I accepted the offer to teach them, I hoped I would be earning some teaching "street cred." I knew they would be slower learners and barely able to read. I even knew they might be a bit difficult behaviorally. What I didn't know was how great the disparity between teaching remedial readers and GT students would be or how miserable it would make me. Imagine spending 90 minutes telling students to stop poking each other with pencils, to hand a book back to its owner, to sit properly in a chair, to stop picking their teeth with the pen they borrowed from me, etc. and then the next 90 minutes trying to stimulate minds who are ready to discuss stoicism and Marcus Aurelius' Meditations. Exhaustion is not strong enough for what I feel. Plus, the reading students don't tend to care about what I'm trying to teach them or what they should be learning. Rarely do I feel like I'm getting through.

HOWEVER, this morning the term "antagonist" came up in our lesson. One of my readers raised his hand and said, "Oh Mrs. Croupe, they had that word on the TAKS test. I remembered that in class we talked about 'anti-' meaning 'against.' That's how I figured out the answer."

Now, imagine me smiling.