Early Childhood vs. Middle Childhood

During my teaching career, I have only been an early childhood teacher, with one year in kindergarten and one year in preschool. Honestly, though, in college, I never imagined myself teaching the little ones. I attended Vanderbilt, where an elementary degree is K-6, so I taught kindergarten, second, fourth, and sixth grades at various points. I taught kindergarten in England as part of a student teaching study abroad opportunity, and that amazing experience will have to be another blog post entirely. Believe me when I say, though, that it was an unbelievable learning experience, and I can't believe it's been four years since I was there. In fact, four years ago, at this exact time, I was wrapping up my abroad experience by touring the British Isles with my sister....and missing England/my school immensely. Sigh... And now I'm off track! Oops...

Back to my point, I can distinctly remember senior year of high school, when I applied for college, I listed my intended area of study as ECE. However, when I noticed that this would certify me PreK-3rd and an elementary degree would certify me as K-6, I immediately switched majors, saying to my mom, "Well, I'm never going to teach preschool!" Lo and behold, less than six years later, I was given the opportunity to switch from K to PreK. My school was cutting a kindergarten classroom, and I was out of a job unless I wanted preschool. I have to say my principal truly went to bat for me with the preschool director, and without my principal's support, I would not have had this opportunity. Basically, my thoughts were, "A job! Great! I'll do it!" And...I loved it. Loved. It. Preschool is everything kindergarten used to be. I was able to design my own lessons and basically design a whole curriculum with the other preschool teacher. It was an amazing experience, and most importantly, when my students were screened for K at the end of the year, all of the K teachers raved about their social, emotional, and academic skills and immediately began adjusting curriculum expectations and determining lessons/activities that were unnecessary for these children. I was so proud of my kids!

So...early childhood is definitely a passion. And I'm a talented teacher with the little ones. I respect them, I understand them, and I am extremely patient with them. (With adults, though, that's a whole other story!) That being said, I also love teaching the bigger kids, fourth, fifth, and sixth graders, specifically. I taught fourth grade math and science and sixth grade language arts, and I can definitely say that my passion is language arts. I love reading and writing, and I want my students to feel the same way. I am in a graduate course right now, and we're reading The Multigenre Research Paper by Camille Allen, and it has really sparked a yearning to teach L.A. in the middle grades again.

Just some thoughts...I have many more years of teaching ahead of me (I hope!), and I would love to have the opportunity to try many different grades. We'll see what happens!