“Welcome to my classroom! We do it a bit different here.” Ms. Hammer said with a large smile on her face. All the other kids’ new sneakers squeaked as they ran to see the big lizard in a terrarium. The whole room was different than I expected, the room smelled of cinnamon and I could hear the buzzing of the lamp in the terrarium. I glanced down to see orange crocs on Ms. Hammer’s feet. When I looked up again she was smiling. I could tell she understood that I appreciated her class differences even though I was too shy to say so. This would be one of the many times my kindergarten teacher would show how much she understood kids. Along with good teaching and being fun, this was the quality that made Ms. Hammer my favorite adult at school.
To start she was a very good teacher. Because we were at very different places, she needed to change her lesson plan to accommodate everyone. I could already read in my head while other kids didn’t even know to read the word cat. Ms. Hammer saw this and would give different assignments so that all students could learn at their own pace. She assisted the group that needed help and the more advanced would do the assignment on their own. This showed that she cared how her students learned and that they
Hammer has that makes her my favorite adult in school. To teach us to read she used our favorite books as motivation so we would want to learn to read them ourselves. I remember on one of the first days she asked what everyone’s favorite books to be read to them were. Then she told us to imagine being able to read them ourselves, whenever we wanted, not having to wait for when our parents had the time. This served as a reason for us to read to ourselves. As Ms. Hammer promised, at the end of the year everyone brought in their books and we spent the entire day reading and talking about our books. Everyone had fun and felt very good about their learning. This was similar to many of her