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Teaching Of Rural Maine : A Labor Of Love

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Teaching in rural Maine has always been a labor of love. The students come from diverse backgrounds and present with many different learning challenges. In the fall of 2015, in walked a young lady who I will call Lynda. Lynda attended our school for a brief two-month period during Kindergarten. She moved away and returned to our school at beginning of second grade. Having repeated Kindergarten, Lynda was an older second grader, performing at a beginning first grade level. Needless to say, Lynda was not interested in being at school. She got in trouble on the bus, on the playground, and in the cafeteria. In class, she avoided participating in activities and refused to do assigned tasks. Lynda was not my first hard to reach child, so …show more content…

A week later, I asked Lynda if she would like to come into my room before school for extra help on her reading? I taught Lynda to read, using an intense reading protocol learned in my Reading Recovery training. Lynda blossomed and made huge gains. Lynda finally saw herself as a capable learner. Lynda is now in third grade, but every Friday afternoon she comes to my classroom to get a bag of food for the weekend. She gives me a hug and tells me about her week. It isn’t always what we teach the student, but what the student teaches us.

Every school seems to have that one go to person. In my school, it would be me. I am the resource from everything from recertification questions to how to unjam the photocopier. Need a paper plate or a vegetable peeler, head right over. Need a committee chairperson, then call on me. I love being part of my school community. Many have asked, “Why do you do so much?” My response has always been, “This is my home, this is my family, and these are OUR students.”
Two strengths that I have as an educator are organization and the ability to follow through on a task. There are many examples of my ability to organize and facilitate successful initiatives, but I will speak of my work with Let’s Go! 5210.
Prior to the fall of 2012, the school nutritionist and kitchen staff took care of promoting healthy habits at our school. I had my students create lunch menus, write thank you

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