It Begins...

I've been teaching for 7 years. Eight if you count the hopelessness of substitute teaching in large Twin City school districts. While there is often frustration in this profession, laughter is even more common.

Each day in my room, we correct two sentences. We work on our grammar, capitalization, and punctuation in the sentences. Each student gets a turn to come up to the board and make a correction. Each student then tells the class what the correction was and why it was made. It was Jamie's turn to make a correction. On the board was the sentence:

but puff my cat hasnt no milk so hes setting on the window

Several corrections had already been made. Joe added an apostrophe in hes "because it stands for he is." Charlie added a period at the end "because it's a declarative sentence." Samantha took out the 'e' in setting and replaced it with an 'i' "because setting doesn't sound right." The sentence now read:

but puff my cat hasnt no milk so he's sitting on the window.

This isn't the easiest sentence for a 4th grader to correct. I was expecting a few hang-ups, but I was happy with the progress so far. With Jamie coming up, I felt confident that she would be able to find something. Maybe the apostrophe in hasnt, maybe capitalize the first word of the sentence, maybe even cross out 'but' because you should start a sentence with 'but.'

Nope. Jamie's correction: "I capitalized 'But Puff' because it's the name of the kitty."

Ever since that day, I've talked about writing down the stories that make this job the greatest in the world. But I haven't ever picked up a pen to do it. It's time. So enjoy if you wish, wonder if you will, and if nothing else, take with you a smile or two.