Mrs. Hines, 1st Grade Teacher

I am so excited to announce that starting in the fall I will officially be the 1st grade teacher at CHESS Christian school!

When I first heard about CHESS, I dreamed about a time that I could become a regular classroom teacher there. I was fairly certain that it would not be in the cards for years down the road, due to the fact that my kiddos are still fairly young (5, 3 and 1). However, when the previous 1st grade teacher announced her retirement earlier this year and the position was made available, I couldn’t help but wonder if God has me in this place for such a time as this. I hemmed and hawed and was terrified to think about becoming a “working Mom”, but after much prayer and conversation, we decided that this would literally be the perfect job for me in this time.

Of course, the entire application, interview and preparation process has been challenging with COVID in the mix, but we have continued and I am spending the summer preparing to step back into the classroom in the fall!

CHESS operates under a unique model of schooling in that it is considered a hybrid education. Core classes are offered two days a week, and elective classes are offered two additional days a week. There is no school on Fridays, but those days are used for field trips, teacher meetings and high school youth trips. Each student builds their own schedule at school. Some students attend all four days of the week while students only attend one class a week– and everything in between!

Starting in the fall I will be a teacher on core classroom days, which means I will only have my students in the classroom with me two days a week. The remaining days of the week are homeschool days in which the parents are guiding the education. It is a very unique model, so I am already brainstorming ways to fit typical 5 day a week curriculum into my classroom situation. As the teacher, I will still be leading all the content that is taught to the students, but my classroom instruction time will be limited to two days a week, while the parents take on the brunt of the remaining work. This means that I will be strongly collaborating with parents as they seek to guide their child’s education.

I am nervous about my first year of teaching…not only do I need to rediscover classroom management, curriculum, and guiding the education of students, but I also need to figure out what it will look like to be be a Mom who now has a job!

Overall, I am THRILLED!!!!! I can’t wait to get into my classroom, decorate and prepare for all that I get to teach these kiddos in the upcoming year! I could not think of a job that I would rather do than this. I cannot believe that I get to step back into the classroom but also still continue to be a stay at home Mom. I am so thankful for the support from my family and friends as I go forward with this!!! Seriously, God has been so, so good to us.

Here are a few FAQs that I have received as I have talked about this upcoming position, so I thought I would try to answer them here. As always, let me know if you have other questions!

Will Tera be in your class?

Yes, she will be! I am a little bit nervous about having my own child in my class my first year teaching, but at the same time I cannot think of a better group of kids that I will get to teach! It’s fun already knowing some of them and their families from their time together in Kindergarten.

What will you do with the other kids while teaching?

Since I will be teaching two days a week, it is thankfully a limited amount of time to need childcare. Theo has his day off (at least for the first semester) on one of those days, so Ezra will stay home with Theo when possible. Kiah has been enrolled in the CHESS preschool and will be right across the hall from me during our two school days! And Ezra will go into childcare on the one day he is not home with Theo. CHESS has a fantastic childcare that they provide for teachers kiddos. We will all be at school together on school days, and I wouldn’t have it any other way!

What do you do on non-teaching days?

On non-teaching days my job will be at home, just like it is now. I will also be “homeschooling” Tera on the off days and still working to collaborate with parents as they homeschool at home based on my guidance.

Will you have to teach virtually?

I sincerely hope not, but we are preparing for that possibility. I feel completely ill-equipped to stay home and teach children from a distance when my passion is to be face to face making learning come alive in the classroom. But isn’t that exactly how every single teacher across the world that has had to do distance learning feels? It’s not ideal. We are praying it will not need to be a thing. But we are also aware that it could be a thing and therefore I am aware that it may be part of my job description, depending how long COVID is sticking around. Thankfully our model of schooling does already lend itself towards collaboration between teacher/parent, which has made the transition to distance learning a bit easer. As far as masks….I shudder at the thought of trying to keep a bunch of 1st graders in masks all day. Yikes. I’m praying it will not be so.

How many students will you have in your class?

Class sizes at CHESS are fairly small, but it is still hard to know how many students I will have in my class. As we all know, things with COVID can change in just one day, so as of right now we still don’t know what enrollment looks like for the fall. During Kindergarten, there were 10 students in the class, so I’m assuming that it will be somewhere around that number give or take a few.

What curriculum will you be using?

Our school currently uses BJU press, and since I’m just now becoming acquainted with it, I do not yet have anything to say about it! I will let you know when I get a year or two under my belt.

As always, if you have any questions about this model of education or the details of how I will be teaching 1st grade, feel free to leave them in the comments and I will do my best to answer them (or direct you to someone who does know the answer!). I will do my best to continue to keep up with this blog space, but I am sure that there will be some times of adjustment and even some overwhelm while I figure out how to dedicate time to my classroom, my home and my blog.