Hooked on Phonics: Life Lessons from the 1st Grade

Dear Hooked on Phonics,

I would like to demand a refund. Sure, my mother never actually purchased your educational materials for me, but I watched enough of your commercials explaining your products with goofy xylophone duets going on in the background that I firmly believe I’ve learned all I need to know from your program. I believed this, of course, until I actually had to teach a phonics lesson and realized I don’t even know what phonics is. You see, I’ve spent the past month student teaching in the first grade. My teacher asked me if I could teach a phonics lesson about the long o and the long u sound.   

Easy, right? WRONG. I was only 2 minutes into my lesson when I realized that I had no idea what I was teaching and was in the middle of a detailed hate mail to the American colonists for not making their own language when they founded their own country. This situation made me reflect on life. Is phonics really even important? No. Phonics is not important for first grade. After you make this groundbreaking discovery for yourself, your whole world will feel like it’s falling apart, just like your company. Never fear. Sure, phonics isn’t important, but there’s lots of other very important things people need to learn. There are lots of educational videos to make that have nothing to do with phonics. Here are just a few things that I’ve learned from first grade that should be included in your new curriculum:

1. Humans are born with a certain set of skills. You don’t need to teach an infant how to breath. You don’t need to teach infants how to use their incredibly high voice box to keep everyone awake all night long. One of the skills that humans were not born with, however, is the ability to use a paper clip. During a lesson I asked my students to take the cards they were using, put them in a pile, paperclip them together, and bring them to me so we could move on to the next part of the lesson. One minute went by. Two minutes. Five minutes. MILLENIUMS. I walked over to a child to see what was taking so long, and was horrified to see one hand holding papers, one hand holding a paper clip, and the two constantly running into one another, and if smashing them together hard enough would fix the problem. This skill is a necessity, folks. If six year olds can’t handle paper clips, I’m pretty sure they can’t master subject-verb agreement.  

2. First graders should be taught a lot of words, including but not limited to the words unicorns, ice cream, hot air balloons, and bicycle. First graders, however, should not be saying the F word. I had the privilege to teach a darling class. When I read my morning message to them, they were darling. When they went to recess, they were darling. When I taught them math, they were darling. When I walked them to lunch, they were darling. When I was being observed by my mentor teacher who was grading me on my lesson, there’s a kid saying the F word. The great news is that on the observation sheet there is no space to dock a teacher on allowing children to corrupt others around them. (The bad news is that there’s probably a spot on the observation sheet to note that I laughed for hours afterwards.)

3. Honesty. First graders tell it like it is. One day at school my student said to me, “Miss Hardy, my grandma would like what you’re wearing today.” And then I stared at her, and she stared right back at me, and that was all that needed to be said. The outfit was never worn again.

4. Lying. First grade taught me that you can use dishonesty to make other people feel like the things they’ve done in life are ALMOST as cool as what you’ve done. After telling a student I go to BYU, she said, “That’s cool. I also went to BYU. Except I was two years old when I went.”

5. Speaking of lying, they’ll believe anything you say. Even if what you say is, “Of course your sunflower seed will grow! I gave you dirt, seeds, and water, so why wouldn’t it?!” Let me tell you why it wouldn’t: the teachers did not prepare the soil beforehand AS DIRECTED ON THE SOIL PACKAGE. I hope all those parents enjoy having a cup of dirt sitting at their house for the next 80 years waiting for something to sprout.

6. First graders do not understand the difference between a comment and a question. One minute you’re explaining about the concept of fact families and asking if anyone has any questions, and the next you’re sitting through a three hour story of how one girl went with her family on a cruise to Cabo.

7. First graders are under the belief that they can take over the world. Upon seeing that someone  had accidentally mixed up the daily schedule and put music in front of math, a girl pounded her fist on the desk and said loudly to the class, “We need to change the daily schedule. WHO’S WITH ME?!?” Suddenly I had a raging rebellion on my hands. (Rebels that don’t know how to use paperclips, of course.)

8. Pinterest and Google with catch on to the fact that you’re a teacher. After googling the best ways to teach missing addend and pinning fun fact family games, the “pins recommended for you” section no longer includes jet packs and cookie butter, but instead color wheels, strategies to teach counting, and an Idiot’s Guide to Functioning in the World.

9. Teaching is like living on a comedy show. In the middle of a lesson you ask a student why they’re crying, and they explain to you that they’ve been staring straight into the lights for the past 10 minutes. Soon half your class is in tears and your favorite F-word saying student is frantically commanding everyone to put their arms above their foreheads to create shade from the ceiling lights.


I loved working with some of BYU's best and brightest student teachers! 

10. Kids know exactly what to say. One morning I came to school feeling particularly sad when a girl came up to me and told me I was beautiful. They make sure to keep you nice and humble as well. While I was turning a jump rope for my students during recess, they requested that instead of chanting jump rope rhymes, we sing the songs from Frozen as they jumped. (Things I would rather do instead of singing Frozen songs: eat lima beans, run a marathon on heated coals, or parallel park) But, because they requested it, I belted ‘Let it Go’ for the whole playground to hear. One of my students told me afterwards, “I think you’ll need to practice singing for a month or two before you become Elsa.”

11. First graders are happy. When I asked my students what they wanted to be when they grew up, one boy said, “I want to be a worker at Krispy Kreme!!” and the rest of the students shrieked in agreement. They’re not worrying about making lots of money or dieting or who they’re going to marry or what their major should be. They’re not worried about making eye contact with a person you kind of know but not well enough to say hello, and they’re not worried about global warming or if children should be vaccinated. They’re just finding something that makes them happy and being just that: happy. When I took my students to recess, I noticed my favorite student (Yes, I have favorite students. Obviously it was the kid who said the F word) was playing alone. I felt bad, figuring he was lonely, until I saw him strike a pose in the middle of the blacktop. All of a sudden he started spinning and jumping, waving his arms around like a Kung Fu Master. He lunged, he sashayed, he leapt, fighting imaginary zombies wherever he went. On his face was one of the biggest, happiest grins that I’ve ever seen. There he was, having a solo dance number in the middle of a hundred kids. The next time I don’t want to do something because I’m afraid I’ll look stupid, I’ll remember him, and do it anyway.  

12. Above all else, everyone should spend some time teaching in the classroom. There will be nights where you stay up until 3 in the morning modifying the perfect text about giraffes so your students can actually understand what they’re reading. There will be hours and hours you spend teaching the students the vowel combinations to make the long o sound, and one girl will still raise her hand and claim that the letters ‘ta’ make the o sound. But at the end of the day, the six year old that swears like a sailor will come up to you and wiggle his fingers into yours and say, “Miss Hardy, I love you. You should go to the office and get my mom’s phone number. Then you can come over to my house and we can play.” Moments like that are certainly more important that knowing phonics.

I hope to see my refund in the mail soon in either cold hard American cash or butterscotch brownies.

In the utmost sincerity,

Rachel