Join us this year in a five-part series while we follow the journey of Courtney Smith at Clemson University as she trains to be a Teacher Leader.

By Courtney Smith

I was in a classroom the other day at school where a teacher had a poster of various emotions asking, “How do you feel today?” As I looked at the faces and stages of feelings, I realized that in this first month and a half of Teacher Leader training I have been through a range of emotions: excited, stressed, happy, worried, grateful, scared, tired, and energized.  

My training class at Clemson is comprised of six Reading Recovery teachers from the state of South Carolina, including myself. We started off our training with the infamous Observation Survey training week and concluded by receiving our giant tub of books. As training continued, we constantly reminded ourselves that, in the words of Ross Gellar, “It’s fine. I’m fine. Everything’s fine.”

As anyone trained in Reading Recovery knows, the first sight of the tub of books and discussion about the oral exam can send a shiver down your spine. My training class shared a thought: ”Can I really do this?”

Yes, we can.

As I returned to my classroom and worked out with the school team to whom I would be serving the first wave, I was assigned a little girl I knew from kindergarten. The whole school knew her from kindergarten. She’d had a tough life at only five years old and handling big emotions wasn’t always easy. Her behavior and tantrums often prevented her from staying in the classroom and having the opportunity to learn.  

As she and I continued to build upon the relationship we had established last year, she began to open up more in her roaming lessons, and her confidence as a reader and a writer grew. During roaming, she loved to write stories and make books to share with teachers throughout the building. On roaming day eight, she told me she wanted to write a book for the library so that other kids could read a book that she wrote. A child who once refused to name a letter of the alphabet for her kindergarten teacher as an act of defiance is now so proud to share her writing that she wants the whole school to see it!

This is the reason we get the box of books, hear and slightly panic about the oral exam, and stay up later than we want to trudge through the brilliance of Marie Clay in Change Over Time. Every day in our work with our students makes a difference in their lives.  

As future Teacher Leaders, we will have the blessing and opportunity to impact more than the students we serve but also all the students of trained teachers in our district. This impact has to be our focus as we go through the year. It may feel like there isn’t enough time to accomplish everything. Sometimes, you may question if you ever really knew anything about Reading Recovery when trying to understand the readings. However, it is worth the stress, the late-night reading, and the long uphill walk to class in August in the South (if you’ve ever been to Clemson, you know what I’m talking about — NO parking!).

It’s worth it for the students we teach, the teachers we train, and the community of Reading Recovery professionals we are building.