Here I Am!

After reading some amazing first grade blogs, I have decided to try this out myself!

Who am I?  I'm currently a Music/Kindergarten teacher in a small independent school somewhere in Canada!   In September I will be changing schools and changing teaching assignments - yes, I'm going "Back to Grade One" - my teaching career started in a Grade 1 class, and I'm excited about going back.  It's very difficult right now to have my head in my new classroom (BRAND NEW, I might point out - the school is just opening in September) and my feet in my old.

Why the move?  My initial teacher training was in early primary, and I taught Gr. 1 for three years, then Gr. 2 for one.  After that I stayed home with my kids for a few years, and then ended up getting a job teaching Music and French - two great interests of mine, but neither of them fields I had specifically trained for.  However, desperate times call for desperate measures - on both my part (I really wanted to start working again, at that particular school) and the school's (we are kind of a remote area, and it was hard to find specialist teachers willing to come).  I DID enjoy the nine years that I taught those two subjects, but over the last few years I've yearned to have my own classroom again.  I got a taste of classroom teaching when, two years ago,  I was asked to job-share a full-day Kindergarten class, in addition to teaching Music.  My experiences there only made me want to teach full-time Kindergarten even more!

At the start of this year I decided I was going to start the process to help me transfer to a new school.  Lo and behold, the very day I went to tell my principal what I was going to do, I found out that this new school had posted positions for Kindergarten and Grade 1!  I got the process in motion, went through the interviews, and at the beginning of this month I was offered the Grade 1 position.  Initially I was a bit disappointed, but the more I have looked into teaching Grade 1, the more excited I have become.  I really want to be the best Gr. 1 teacher I can be, and I'm thrilled to have all the help out there!