Beyond the Basics

When I first became a teacher I was so pumped and ready to help my people and change the course of history. My desire was genuine but my reality hit me so hard that I didn't know how to handle it. I landed a job in an inner city school and on my first day I was ready to be the best that I could be. My first grade students walked into the room with their book bags in hand and their parents holding onto them excited to meet me, in hopes that I would be the teacher that would save the day!

Many students came in with a plethora of problems and I was in trouble from the start. I had 24 students and no mentor to guide me. The other teachers answered questions but they had similar issues in their classrooms, it was an uphill battle.

Most teachers burn out within the first five years and from my first year experience I can understand how that could happen. I was able to finish the year out pretty successfully considering I had students that couldn't write their names, read, or count. I witnessed some pretty horrible realities in these children's lives  aside from academics and it broke my heart and made me feel like I wanted to do more.

The reality is teachers can't do it alone. I have since polished many skills that were missing on that first day of school and I understand that we are on the front lines of a system that is not designed for many of the problems that our children are facing everyday. We need our parents to step up and be their child's first teacher. A few minutes a day to teach basic word recognition, tracing, writing and spelling their names is very basic and should be an expectation for students entering elementary school.

Statistics show that a kid that begins school without these basic skills will more than likely be behind and stay behind. Help your child by teaching them the proper tools to begin and end their academic career successfully.