First year teacher’s success
by Lisa Liechner in Christiansburg, Virginia, USA
Last August, Dan began his first year teaching. When he came home the first day, he was pretty much wiped out and convinced that he wasn’t cut out to be a teacher and should quit … soon. Since Dan’s not one to quit easily, it was a real shock that he was so set to give up. I emailed several people asking for prayers, and I also was practically on my knees most of the night in prayer for him.
Dan went to school the second day with me practically pushing him out the door. He made it through the second day and decided it wasn’t as bad as the first, and that he was willing to continue giving it a shot. I knew if he could make it through a week, and then another, that he would find his groove and make it through the whole year (and maybe even many more!).
Today Dan came home from school with a look on his face like he had just aced an Engineering Physics exam (and that was a really hard class!). He was so proud!! I asked him about his day and he told me about some of what he did – mainly he talked about playing capture the flag with his kids outside and diving to steal the flag of the school’s only other male teacher – for which he got grass stains on his knees and a huge scrape on his arm. (He always comes home and talks excitedly about the games he played at recess. What a guy.)
But there was more … he said the results came back from the writing portion of the state’s standardized tests and that his kids did really well. Really well. I said, “how well?” He said, “we got 100%.” I said, “100%? What does that mean?”
“It means 100% of my students passed the test. ALL of them passed!”
In his first year of teaching, his class had the most passing grades of any of the other teachers!
So I’m a proud lady today. He still has to get back results from reading, math, science and VA studies, but we are both really excited about the results from writing – especially since he thought he didn’t do well teaching them how to write, and that he didn’t think they could have done so well!
Woo hoo!
!