Dear Mary . . .

 Dear Mary, In my second teaching job in base enlisted housing in Bremerton, I was grateful that I started in second grade, because the early emphasis on learning reading was phonics. The texts that we used were the Lippincott Readers, which had a controlled vocabulary beginning with CVC  words progressing from there to consonant blends, digraphs, and more. I am glad that I gained a sound phonics background. I was then transferred into fourth grade, and we were teaching reading out of the Ginn 720 series. The emphasis was on comprehension skills. I do recall a colleague saying: "My kids can read fine, but they don't understand what they read." That stuck with me. She spoke correctly, in that the kids did lack comprehension skill development. It took me months to ferret out the cause of their deficit. I knew that reasoning skills and vocabulary come from a child conversing with adults. An enriched environment will build cognition. At the same time I decided to get a second...

 Dear Mary, This is the story of a little boy in my class, with his name redacted to protect his identity. He had a pretty rough childhood; his mom was on welfare and SNAP. Two years before I had him in my class, I had heard from another teacher he was even suicidal in second grade.  I know that I am the "soft touch" kinda teacher, so I had noticed that he was wearing older clothes that were probably one to two sizes too small for him, e.g., the hem of his jeans came down to just past his calves. At a parents' gathering, I took his mom aside and asked her if she wouldn't mind if I were to buy him some clothes for Christmas. She was glad that I would do so, because, deity bless him, he had only asked her for a Ronald McDonald watch that was only $2 on promotion at the drive in. I then went on a mission to shop every thrift store in Burien WA, to look for clothing that would fit him. This was in the days of the old Sears catalog, and looked up his size there, and knew w...

 I am naming this blog: "Dear Mary Stoyko." I had the privilege to get to know her, when she was a student in my fourth grade class. In the past few years, she and I became reacquainted via Facebook. It turns out that she has become a magnificent educator, having mastered team teaching along with her special STEAM (i.e., Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics) curriculum, using hands-on learning, along with fully integrated lessons. In short, she teaches the whole child. She is now working to attain her administrator credential. I was, what I consider, a good teacher, but not great. Organizing has always been one of my foibles. I am fortunate that Mary esteems me far greater than I probably deserve. But I did love my students, and got to know them very well. I also used my ongoing desire to learn to be able to analyze what my students' needs were and to prescriptively design lessons to meet their needs. So this blog will consist of memories and anecdotes ...