Today was my 14-month old granddaughter’s first day in preschool. Throughout the day, my daughter shared pictures to our family chat to keep us in the loop.

We saw her eating at a table with other children. She ate all of her fruits and vegetables first.  

We saw her sitting in one of the teacher’s laps while listening to a story. Budding teacher’s pet? LOL!

We saw her sleeping in a tiny cot next to other children. She was covered with a blanket and had her lion with her.

We saw how happy she was. She didn’t cry as I had initially predicted.

I told my daughter to just take her for a couple of hours to see how she would do and then slowly increase her time there because I thought she might cry. She has been at home with her parents since she was born. I was using my experience with my own children to give her some advice. My daughter had decided her daughter could handle staying longer in daycare because she knows her child. And, she was right.

The same is true about teaching. We give each other advice, suggestions and encourage each other, but in the end, we all learn by doing. Some things may come easily and others will take some fine tuning. It’s a career long challenge to get teaching right and we are always on that journey. We’ll make lots of mistakes along the way. We will develop strong opinions about different approaches and practices. But if we are to get better we must learn from our students. We must have faith in what we know about teaching and get better at our profession through knowing our students.

So happy for my granddaughter. Can’t wait to get more pictures tomorrow.

Cross posted to the Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life Tuesday Challenge.