A New Role

A year ago, I was just a mom. Last year, I was a preschool teacher. This year, I'm a first grade teacher. I'm scared.

Being a mom isn't easy. Looking back, though, it seemed much less complicated than what I'm dealing with, now. By no means do I want to devalue the education and work of a preschool teacher. Still, I chose to go pretty light on the structured teaching and make it seem less like work for them. That resulted in a lot of fun, self-guided learning.

This summer, I've got two six-year-olds who I am proud of. They can at least count to fifty (we sometimes make them count each push in order to get pushed on the swing set, but we stop at fifty), sound out complicated words, recognize an array of simple words, sound out to spell with improving accuracy, and understand the basics of capitalization and punctuation. Socially, I'm noticing that one is much more observant and adept than the other, but they're both beginning to understand the significance of being individuals. They're learning that other people have needs and feelings, and that is really important considering all of us have to live in the same house.

As an aside, I think that point might be significant to new parents (and I know quite a few). Kids aren't just born knowing that other people have needs and feelings. When I first had my twins, I'm not sure if I didn't know that, or if I just never really thought about it. All I can say is I certainly expected them to figure it out a lot sooner than they did. If you can avoid it, don't make that mistake.

According to my rudimentary internet research, kids don't typically start to really understand other people's feelings until between age 4 and 5, and it can be a pretty slow process from there. My twins are 6. They have more or less figured out the minefield of "other people's feelings", I think. Sometimes I think they truly believe their 3-year-old sister doesn't have any, but they typically treat others much better than they used to.

They don't understand other people's obligations. I still have to remind them that I don't, in fact, work for them. Sometimes I have important things to do, and setting up a game for them to play is less important than getting my driver's license renewed at the moment.

So, back to the point: This year, I have to submit a plan for homeschooling. I already wrote our plan, but there's not a lot of information available regarding what it has to include. Last year, I started out thinking I was going to track our contact hours, even though it wasn't required, just for practice. That didn't last long. Shortly after we started, I sent them to visit their dad and he didn't record almost anything. 

Now, I have to keep track of hours and show at least 172 days, averaging 4 hours per day. The idea of this is pretty daunting. I don't think that's a lot of time or that it will be a difficult goal to meet. The concern is that I have a whole year to make mistakes, forget to write things down, and worry about their hours.

This is pretty exciting. This year, I'm a teacher. But, again, I'm scared.