Good news!

The baby and I are getting a break at work!! I've been feeling stretched so thin with 27 kids in my class. The other kindergarten teacher has 28 students and we both have been pretty vocal about our frustrations with our large class sizes. Well, two weeks ago my principal told me to write a proposal to get us more aide support time. The district office liked my proposal so much that instead of more aide support, they approved the immediate hiring of a third kindergarten teacher to help us each morning. She'll only work until lunchtime each day but when she's here, she'll take 9 kids from each class to do all the reading and writing lessons with them. What does that mean for me? Beginning next Monday morning, I will only have 18 kids every morning instead of 27!!!!! That's a HUGE difference :) I'll get all my kids back in the afternoons but I'm grateful for the morning relief. This may not seem significant to some of you, but trust me...it means kids will get much more individual attention and instruction. Extensive research in education proves that smaller class sizes leads to greater academic success for children--maybe that has something to do with the teacher's stress level and sanity :-)

Anyway, the new teacher starts on Monday. We interviewed her and offered her the job this afternoon. She accepted eagerly and thus....stress relief at work is in my near future. Woohoo!!

Love,
Mindy and one great little soccer player...