He WILL Make it to 6th Grade

It's January 27th. Technically, it's not too late to make a resolution.

I am resolving that I WILL get one of my students to 6th grade.

This guy is struggling. Big time. I thought a dog distracted by a squirrel was bad. This kid is even more distracted. I sat with him today for the last hour of school and it was a serious task to even get him to open to the right page.

Today, he mentioned to me that he was failing and that he would probably be held back. "Why?" I asked. "You want to do all of this again? You don't wanna go to middle school?" He shrugged and then thought about it for a minute. "No, no, Ms. S I wanna go to middle school." I'm not sure if he ever really thought about 6th grade in September being a possibility, but today I started to get his mind set on it.

On my ride home today, I caught my eyebrows scrunching down as I thought about this little dude. Has anyone ever believed in him? What's really holding him back from moving on and getting higher than an F? I thought about ways to help him and how much I wanted to see him succeed. I'm not sure if this is a blessing or a curse of teachers how we just want the best for these kids and we almost feel like we let the down if they don't and yada yada yada. Either way, my goal for this semester of student teaching is to get him to pass.

Here we go.