Sunday, August 30, 2015

Letter to my students at the start of a new school year

My Dear Students,

Tomorrow, you start a brand new school year. You're excited and I'm excited. My heart is full with so many emotions as I prepare to teach you for another year. I feel both honored and humbled by the opportunity to be part of your lives again.

You've helped me clean and organize the classroom. You've labelled and personalized your notebooks. I've watched you organize your pens and pencils. There was a general buzz of excitement as you tell me that you're looking forward to the new school year. You've told me about the subjects that you're most looking forward to: Spanish, History, Spelling and Science. And yes, we'll be learning all these things, and so much more. You'll learn about decimals, the Crusades, how to use a microscope and how to spell words like 'squeeze' and 'Avenue'.

But those aren't the things that I consider to be the most important parts of this year. I want you to learn to think for yourself. I want you to learn how to evaluate information and come to conclusions for yourselves. You'll see that I don't have all the answers - and that's okay. We can search for answers together. I hope you'll gain self-confidence, poise and maturity. I hope that your love for learning will increase and that you never lose that curiosity that sometimes makes my job a little harder. I want you to see yourselves the way I see you: adorable, intelligent students full of potential. I want you to know that you can do anything and everything you set your minds to.

I'll be hard on you this year - just as I am every year. I'll push you. I'll make you do things that you might not want to do. And there'll be times that I don't let you do things that you want to do. You'll write more. You'll spell more. You'll do more math. You'll read harder books. You'll have to think harder and work harder than you've ever done in your short school lives. I'm sure there'll be times when you get frustrated and when you'll frustrate me. And that's okay. Do you know why I'll push you? Because you are so smart. Because I know you have the ability to succeed. And because I would be doing you a huge disservice if I let you get lazy or to plateau. You deserve more than that from me. I'll give you my best and I won't let you do any less. So even though there'll be frustrations, maybe even some tears and days when I wonder 'where did I go wrong?', at the end of the day, I love you so much and I know you love me, so we'll be okay.

But we'll have fun too. Don't worry. This will be a fun year. We'll paint. We'll play games. We'll do experiments. We'll make messes. We'll laugh. Because learning should be fun. Perhaps, if I show you how much fun learning can be, you'll never want to stop learning. Also, I think learning should reflect real life. And life can be frustrating, messy and just plain hard. But it can also be full of wonder, fun and laughter.

My precious students, I hope that you'll learn a lot this year. I also know that I'll learn much from you too. You have the whole world at your feet. Your possibilities are endless. And I want to help you get one step closer to those dreams that you might not have even dreamed of yet.

Here's to another year. May it be our best year yet. So let's pick up the pens, pencils and markers. Let's crack open the text books and notebooks. And let's get to learning.

From,
Your very excited Teacher.

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