I am a teacher by heart; so, when I think of back to school I usually think of putting up bulletin boards, arranging the room, and getting my first week of lessons mapped out. Even now my professional job is to help Kindergarten through third grade teachers make learning meaningful and fun. In the past, I have been the one taking the child from the parent…. In a few weeks this will all change, I have to hand over one of the loves of my life to a teacher. Not a preschool teacher, a elementary teacher for five days a week. So strange being on the other side of this!
It was weird when I was walking through orientation as a parent and not as a teacher. I felt like I wanted to get up and help the teachers presenting and I also found myself biting my tongue and not being one of those know it all parents. I also felt my inner teacher yearning to be back in the classroom as a teacher rather than the creator of learning, my job title now (as well as mommy)…
This parent role will be hard for me. It will also be the start of a new role and the beginning of my first born truly growing up and becoming a pupil. My hope is that my son will love school and continue to get excited about learning. He is a bright kid with lots of quirks. So it should be interesting to see how he does socially this year. Academics are his strength. I like to attribute that to the fact that I am a teaching and I have been teaching him academics since birth… but truthfully, he has my husbands genes. Too smart for his own good. Socially he seems to always be behind and that is scary to me. I think that is probably my biggest worry about my little man starting school. I wonder where he will fit in with his peers? Will they like him? Will they be nice to him? Who knows, only time will tell. I don’t want him to be the most popular kid, I just want him to fit in with a group eventually.
So, I will end my little rant with some cool back to school ideas from the other side, meaning back to school ideas for parents rather than ideas that help teachers get ready for back to school;
Check out: Three ways to have fun with back to school!
Back to School Checklist for parents.
