New Year, New Schools

As a reading and teaching consultant, I have the opportunity to begin each year with a new set of colleagues and students alike. Of course, I still have my work with schools of previous years, but just as our goal as educators is to graduate students from our schools, my goal as a consultant is to help teachers and schools become independent of my services.

But the point of this entry is to describe the feelings of my first days in an entirely new building with a group of new teachers and their equally unfamiliar students. I am working in the St. Louis area and the middle school teachers I met yesterday are the most enthusiastic teachers I have ever met. As a consultant, to step into a new culture can be intimidating. I wonder if they will like me– I wonder if what I bring to them will be useful and new– I wonder how our time together will be spent–will they listen attentively or will they interact engagedly. Pleasantly for me, they dove into the work and really almost literally dove.

My high school teachers, who can sometimes bereserved, are meaningfully involved in our work, which for this month is focused on vocabulary skills, in teaching and in learning. My week has been one of the best in my career…the week began with a sense of uncertainty in the newness of the challenge, yet the week ended in the assurance that we will make a measurable difference in the achievement and persistence of our students! Bravo teachers!!