As I am sure you saw on my instagram post, I am moving to 2nd Grade. It still feels so weird to even say that because I have been in preschool for my whole teaching career so far. I know it’s only been 3 years, but that is a big deal. I haven’t moved my classroom in 3 years, I’ve been teaching the same thing since I was hired right out of college. Now I’m moving to 2nd grade which is a pretty big jump. It’s going to be a huge change. My preschool classroom right now is fully self-contained special education.
In 2nd grade, I am going to be co-teaching. So, at my school that means that I will be the special education teacher in an inclusion 2nd grade classroom. It will be myself and a general education teacher teaching a typical sized class (20-25 students). We could have up to 8 special education students in the classroom that are mainly my responsibility, although we will both be teaching the entire class together. I will be in the classroom all day, so I don’t do any pull-out.
I am so excited about this change. This was very much my choice. I wanted to move out of preschool. I love preschool and I love the team I work with, those are my best friends, but it was time for a change. There’s a couple of reasons why I wanted to move. Halfway through this school year, I started talking to my principal about possibly wanting to move out of preschool next year.
I recently graduated with my masters in Teacher Leadership, a principal certification, and a supervisor certification. Those are certifications that I want to eventually use. I felt that, in order to best do those jobs in the future, I needed more experiences than just being in preschool self-contained. That is not required for those jobs. I wanted more experiences so that when I am a supervisor and/or principal I can speak about the many different types of classrooms that I have experienced first-hand.
Another reason for wanting to move was that I wanted to teach in a different environment with students that were a little bit older. There were also parts of the preschool program in my district that I was beginning to not like. Once I shared all of this information with my principal, we began talking about the different possibilities for next school year. I did want to stay at my school. I understood that if I didn’t want preschool, and there was nothing else for me at my school, I would have to go to another school in my district. My principal started to talk to me about co-teaching. As a special education teacher, that was the only other option at my school for next year.
At first, I was hesitant about co-teaching because I have loved having my own classroom, and my big, beautiful classroom down in the brand-new preschool hallway. My new classroom is going to be much smaller and have a lot less space for me. The teacher who I will be co-teaching with has worked in that classroom for many years already, so when I move in, I will not be able to bring all of my stuff with me. Once I started discussing the idea further with my principal and talking about how good it would be for me to get this experience, I was on board.
Then I had to tell all of the people closest to me at school first. I told my teammates, my teaching assistants and the speech therapist that works with my students first. It was super emotional, and there were definitely tears, but they totally understood.
TPT update:
I still plan on making preschool and Creative Curriculum materials. I also hope to make grade level materials, especially second grade materials, as I learn the curriculum and material.
If you have any questions, advice or suggestions for me please message me on Instagram!!
Thank you all for your endless support! I am truly so excited for this next adventure!!
