Teaching: Life of Champions

(Isn't my kitchen AWESOME?)

First day of teaching: OVER.

Conclusions:

Fifth graders are AWESOME.

Second Graders will KILL ME.

I’d like to make it perfectly clear that I never wanted to teach second graders, and I’ve known since the beginning that young ‘uns wouldn’t be the best for me, but there it is. Thankfully, they’re my first class, so I can get them over and done with quickly. Not-so-luckily, I have them every day but Tuesday. Ah, well. Take the good with the bad, I suppose.

The fifth graders I can intimidate with enjoyable ease, so that makes teaching them rather a pleasure. But as I said: day one. We’ll see how I feel after day 7.

I have 6 kids in my second grade class, which is plenty to go around. They’re a handful, all wanting my attention at the same time, and throwing temper tantrums to the left, and sulking to the right. But, again I say: day one. A former teacher of theirs says that they get better with time. Boy, I sure hope so.

I had another little surprise today, after my two initial classes. One of the secretaries comes up to me, and says that one of my writing students had come to the school. My writing class isn’t until Friday, but she had come today, and was ready to be taught then and there. It was 6:55 in the evening, I had noodles in chopsticks halfway to my mouth when the secretary, Charlene, asks me if I would mind teaching this one writing student today instead of Friday. So, I took my noodles, ran around grabbing things I didn’t think I would need until Friday, and rushed downstairs to teach writing to this girl who had mistakenly turned up on Wednesday. Charlene assured me that it would be just on Wednesday, and then my student, Yenna, wouldn’t come on Friday this week to the original class. But, after two hours of one-on-one time, Charlene tells me that Yenna will indeed be joining the rest of the class on Friday as well. So I guess she’ll get the same lesson again on Friday. Poor girl. Ah, well. I love writing. It’s so cool.

So. First day of teaching? Done. Was it awesome? Totally. Will I like it for a year? Well, let’s hope.