Thursday, July 5, 2018

Changes On The Horizon...

   WHOA... what's this?
 Teaching Munchkins has some activity after over a year??

   Yes, I have been MIA and Teaching Munchkins had been on hiatus for many, many months! 
  You know how every teacher has a year that is just downright chaotic? Well, this was THAT year for me. The 2016-2017 school year ended on a pretty funky note and I could only have hoped that things would improve in the 2017-2018 school year. 
   But that did not happen! Devastating NorCal wildfires ravaged our city for weeks in October and that really threw the whole school year out of whack. In December, a 1st grader & his father died tragically and it affected the entire school community. Shortly after, a beloved teacher aide quickly lost her battle to cancer. Both of these individuals (student & aide) were a part of my first year at the school, so they held a special place in my heart. Our school community experienced alot of sadness and grief for the first half of the year.
    And it continued to fall apart as my own personal matters started to surface...so the second half of the year was just as chaotic as the first half of the year. 
    And then March rolled around and a difficult decision was made. A Dual Immersion School was proving to NOT be a good fit for me. It was a hard thing to come to terms with. While I was growing and learning new things as a professional, I was just way too stressed and unhappy with the school environment and the demands that were being placed on the students & teachers. It started to reflect in my teaching and I just was not where I wanted to be. I was not being as successful as I could have been in that type of school environment. This is the second time I have felt this way since moving to California. I need to get it right and find something that was going to work out!

  While I loved my 2 years in Kindergarten, it was just too much. The developmentally inappropriate demands that are being trickled down to this grade level was going against everything I knew and believed about Early Childhood. I tried my best to alter things to cater to the vast variety of learners I had (and I had quite a diverse group!) but it is 5x harder to do so in a Dual Immersion program where students not only need to learn all the Kindergarten skills, they also have to learn it all in a new language! 

SO... long story short. I have moved on!

    I will now be a Transitional Kindergarten (TK) teacher in a new school, in a new school district! I am very excited to going back to teaching in a TK classroom, where I will be free to teach in a more developmentally appropriate manner! I need to stand by my Early Childhood Teaching Philosophy and get back to my love & passion for teaching the youngest learners!

    So until then, Teaching Munchkins will be under construction as I get all set up for the next school year. I am eager and excited for this adventure! I cannot wait to share my TK teaching adventures with all of you!
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