Everything You Need to Know About Teaching 3rd Grade

I’m on the verge of completing the first week of my second third grade tenure (see what I did there, with the counting?), and I think it’s safe to say I’m already a huge expert on all of this once again. To be fair, a lot of it I already knew. But it’s been several, several years since the last time I could call myself a third grade teacher -- we’re talking Clinton presidency -- so a lot of this is stuff I needed to be reminded about. If you’ve never taught 3rd grade before, here’s pretty much all you need to know:

*Crayons, markers, and colored pencils are everything. The simple act of coloring is purely hypnotic for them; coloring with markers borders on the transcendent. The typical third grader is ready to deconstruct their entire personal infrastructure if it means finding the exact crayon they’re searching for. If there is ever an apocalypse and only third graders survive it, I have no doubt that crayons and markers will immediately be recognized as international currency.

*The directions presented by the teacher are generally viewed as casual suggestions. Speaking from the teacher perspective, if you want directions to be followed, you need to a) get the attention of everyone in the class, b) say your directions, c) rephrase them a minimum of seven different ways, and d) simply accept there will be several instances in the subsequent thirty minutes when you will be asked to repeat everything you just finished saying.

*Every joke you make is the funniest thing they’ve ever heard, because they haven’t been around very long and they only know about seven jokes.

*It’s been close to a decade since I’ve been able to read aloud to my class, and I have missed it dearly. Turns out I am still absolutely AMAZING at it. Seriously. I could sell tickets, and they’d be scalped for three times their face value in the bathrooms.

*When you call on third graders in class, some of them will craft their answers as lengthy, almost literary, prose. They are probably the ones you don’t want to call on too frequently, but they will always have their hands in the air.

*Third graders shed teeth like trees drop leaves in late autumn. I had two kids in the health office for this before lunch on the first day.

*Each one of those tiny people -- the goofy ones, the shy ones, the quiet smilers, the needy huggers, the entire cross section of humanity that walks through that doorway in the morning? Each of them represents the absolute center of someone else’s emotional existence. And they all deserve to be treated as such.