Third Grade... Ahhh...

I love when people write about their classrooms.  32 Third Graders and One Class Bunny is the perfect book to make any teacher laugh outloud and anyone who has been in third grade take a trip back down memory lane.  He writes about the everyday joys and milestones of being a teacher, with humor and emotion.  When you read this book, you can tell that he enjoys his job and that he finds it a joy and privilege to spend time each day with children.  There's something honest and endearing about this book (even a little hokey at times) and I have share many of his stories with my students.  We should all be using this book as a prompt to get us writing about our classrooms and the children we are blessed to spend time with each day. 

     I was excited to see another collection by Peter Done in the bookstore called Close Encounters of the Third Grade Kind.  As a third grade teacher, there are so many stories that I relate to... some make me laugh and some make me cry.  It's so nice to read something written by a teacher who does his best to celebrate children.  He knows his students so well and it's obvious that they know him.  This new book is just has humor-filled as his previous book.  
     And, it's good to hear from someone who isn't focused on what children can't do... but rather focuses on what makes them uniquely individual.  There's a voice of sincerity in both of these books.  

     I say we use Peter Done as a mentor... one day a week all of us should put down our clipboards, our "intervention checklists," our progress monitoring, and write a piece or two that captures the joy and passion of being a teacher and the pleasure of spending every day with children... get back to the roots of why we became teachers in the first place!