A Great Moment

Just in case I don't have enough to do teaching a new subject to three different grades, effectively meaning I am teaching 3 new subjects, I decided to sign on to do my school's Power Hour, which is certainly nothing like what that term meant in college. It is an hour and a half after school 4 days a week when kids who are below grade level on reading and math skills get extra, small group instruction. I am doing the literacy power hour 2 days a week (Mondays and Wednesdays) because I am basically a bleeding heart- neither of the 2 English teachers at my school wanted to do it, and I felt like it was important enough to take it on.

I have been doing Power Hour for about 3 weeks now, and it had definitely added stress to my life- instead of just 3 preps, I now have a 4th for Power Hour. Other teachers who had signed on to do it have already quit, and we have switched math teachers twice, and I wasn't sure it was worth it- until Monday around noon, when I was running to the bathroom because it was finally my prep period. I ran into one of my students coming out of the girls' bathroom, and she stopped me to show me her most recent test in reading: a B. This girl is in learning support for reading and math because she is behind on her skills, so I was obviously super excited for her, but I almost cried when she said, "Actually, I wanted to thank you for helping me." I haven't had a student thank me for helping them before- middle schoolers tend not to think like that- so it was truly an awesome moment. Made even more awesome when I graded her most recent social studies test and she got a 96% :)