Second quarter: Kim Nightingale settles into life as a fourth-grade teacher at Blanchard Elementary

When we last checked in with first-year teacher Kim Nightingale, she was preparing to move from St. Louis to Cape Girardeau, where she would start her first job as a fourth-grade teacher at Blanchard Elementary. She was a little unsure what to expect from her first job out of college, but felt good about her student teaching experiences and education at Mizzou.

By mid-October, Kim loves her school and students, and knows she made the right decision coming to Cape Girardeau.

"It's better than I expected," she says. "The day runs very smoothly. I have a great mentor, who's given me more help than I could ever dream of."

There are four fourth-grade classes at Blanchard, and Kim's class has about 17 students. She explains that part of the reason she was hired was to help create more managable class sizes for the other teachers. She adds that she has an "amazing" class -- the students behave very well when switching between classes, they get along with each other, and she's pretty sure they like her, too.

"I haven't had any real trouble," she says. "I'm lucky to have such a great group of kids for my first year."

Her class has been hitting the books this fall with a new reading curriculum, multiplication and division and the metric system. They've also been working on personal responsibility.

"At the beginning of the year they didn't want to do their homework or study," says Kim, but when her students got their first grades back, they realized how important it is to do the work that's expected of them. Her classroom has a homework chart to keep track of which students turn in their assignments; three students recently earned a pizza party with Kim because they turned in all their homework. The reward system seems to work well, and Kim can see a difference in her students: When they see their classmates get a prize, they want to work harder so they can earn a prize as well.

Kim is learning plenty of things herself, like how to manage her time -- this was one of her biggest worries at the start of the school year.

"It's hard to get everything done that's expected in a week," she says. "By the time I get home, I'm exhausted."

Kim's a good planner, though: She's usually at school from 7:15 a.m. to 5 or 5:30 p.m., and she's worked out a system to get all her grading done. She also starts planning lessons for the next week the Tuesday before, so all her planning is done on Friday.

In her downtime, Kim likes to sleep, relax, watch sports, and sometimes do dinner and a movie on the weekends. She tries to visit her family in St. Louis about once a month, and she's also heading to Mizzou for homecoming this fall.

"The move was fun, and I've adjusted very well," she adds.

Having visited Cape Girardeau several times before, she already felt comfortable in the area, and says her biggest task was decorating her classroom. Her mom and 11-year-old sister helped her decorate, and it sounds like Kim has since found additional support from her coworkers. The faculty and staff have been "extremely welcoming and so, so helpful," she says -- in fact, Blanchard really feels like a "tight-knit family."

Pick up the February issue of Flourish to read about Kim's next few months on the job.