We've absolutely lost the art of asking kids to read real books.
In May, I found this great Youtube channel with a feature called First Chapter Friday. The host reads the first chapter of a classic-ish fiction book to kids in order to hook them and get them to want to read the whole book. Since I was only with my 3rd and 4th grade students for 3 months this year, I was only able to read them two chapter books as read alouds. I told them if I "had them for more time", these are the books I'd recommend because everyone should read them by the end of 4th grade. So I made a summer reading list!
All of these can be found on the Youtube channel and I hooked those kids with these first chapters, for sure. Some of my students had already read a few so they were able to check those off the list immediately.
In addition, we watched the Disney version of The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler because I was using a novel study for it with a student. They absolutely loved it. And we also watched Rikki Tikki Tavi....We saw a fictional story about a character called Mongoose Man taking down a snake (long story) and I was like yeah, mongooses are the natural enemies of snakes and so we had to watch Rikki Tikki Tavi. They loved that too! (We did not read it...it's usually a middle school short story.)
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I thought I wrote a little bit about stopping homeschooling and going back to work but maybe I never did? And to say I feel like a hypocrite and a fraud would be accurate. Or rather, maybe I only talked about it on Instagram? But, regardless, here's the explanation:
In January, we realized that we're likely going to retire here in Kansas. This is where he's stationed, this is where he'll finish his career (99% certainty) and we might as well settle in, right? We decided we'd buy a house and plan for next steps, such as what am *I* going to do? What are the kids going to do? All those big life decisions civilians usually have years to ponder must be made within weeks in the military life.
I started looking around and thinking that I'd go back to work in the fall but there is no full-day pre-k in the state of Kansas' public schools. I'm not completely sold on the public schools at this point as a teacher and as a parent anyway so, okay, that's fine. But I couldn't take Wells to school if I got a job because there was nowhere for Sutton to go. Then, I couldn't work if I sent him to school anyway because Sutton would still be at home. It was a lot of inner turmoil. I could write some Big Thing about why I lost steam with homeschooling but, honestly, my kids just love going to school. I don't know what else to say about it. The co-op was a struggle because it gave them a taste of that organized learning and they wanted to go every day. Our co-op was only 3 times a month! It was a problem, you know?
I had toured a private school last fall because I wanted Sutton to go to preschool when she was 4 (this coming fall). A fun fact is that private education is USUALLY the only place you can find full-day prek. Then Wells was like "why can't I go too?" --that's when I knew homeschooling had a shelf life for us.
There were signs.
I found out through a mom friend that this local private school would be hiring soon so I decided You know what, I'm gonna send them a resume and maybe get hired for next year. And, because it's a private school, I needed to see what the salary/tuition balance would look like. It's not like just enrolling your kid and pulling a paycheck. They have classroom size caps and all as well. It would have to be mutually beneficial to everyone for this to work out.
Long story short, the principal called me the next day and asked if I was interested in next year or if I could start right away. They had an immediate opening. A teacher had left in October unexpectedly and the principal had been teaching the class. After a series of interviews and discussions and so much paperwork, I was hired.
Wells was in the 1st/2nd grade class, Sutton was enrolled in all-day prek-3, and I had a class of ten (10) 3rd and 4th graders who hadn't had an assigned teacher for 4 months. The learning curve was STEEP. I mean, mountainous. It was the Swiss Alps. The first day I drove home thinking what did I do? and I legitimately regretted it for like 7 hours. But Wells and Sutton were SO HAPPY and JOYFUL and loved their first day and I knew I just had to keep going. (e.g. imagine 10 year olds who hadn't had structure or management or someone reliable day in and day out to teach them ->> that's a hard crowd to win over).
In addition, Scott was gone a lot this spring so it was a lot of pressure on me but it gave us a purpose each day. He also left this entirely up to me and I knew I could never ever (ever) complain about getting up early and going to work because he always offers me the out of you don't have to work if you don't want to. Alas, I like money, so I would rather contribute financially to the family if I can (sorry, it's the truth).
Funny story: I did spend a lot of our homeschool mornings getting up between 8-9am while he took care of the kids' breakfast, etc and when I told him I was going to start getting up at 5am again, he didn't believe me and thought the very idea was hilarious. So it became a personal challenge of yes, I can do this.
I started right after Valentine's Day and February/March/April was a blur. In May, I started plotting out/planning for next year. I won't go into deep details about everything I've been doing there --only other teachers would find it interesting-- but I am blown away the way the school has taken us in and made us part of their community. My kids are so loved and cared for there. It's not that different from our last school actually; Wells and Sutton have this ability to become the friendliest strangers anywhere they go. It truly feels like we've always been there.
So, the short answer as to why I went back to work is that we decided to just settle in here. It's part of military life: if you never unpack, you never unpack. You have to unpack and build something for yourself wherever you go. I think a lot of spouses make the mistake of never doing that and are permanently miserable because of it. A spouse/friend gave me that advice years and years ago: you have to unpack, even if you're only there for a year and your husband rolls his eyes and complains about putting nail holes in walls. There's no alternative if you want to actually experience life along the way.
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