My alarm went off SO EARLY on Tuesday morning. It's been a long time since I rolled out of bed at 5 am every day. But that's my new wake up time so I can be showered, have my coffee/ breakfast, and be ready for the bus that arrives around 6:40 and the school day that begins promptly at 7.
The first day was fairly uneventful, beginning with a welcome assembly then a day filled with get to know you activities and games. All in all, it was a great day and I enjoyed meeting the kiddos.
Speaking of the kiddos, I teach 3 grades. My home room is 5th grade but I also teach 4th and 6th grade math and language arts. The classes are very small, only 20 kids between the 3 of them. 4th grade is the smallest group with only 3 in their class. They are a fun little class of 2 boys who have lots of energy and a sweet girl who is new to our school this year. The boys have been very good about helping her since she has no prior experience with English and I'm only supposed to speak English with the kids. I do sometimes give her a word or 2 in Spanish because I feel bad knowing she's sitting there so lost. It's been fun getting to know these kids better! One of the boys told me yesterday about how he loves to cook. I asked if he could teach me to make tortillas and he just started rambling off about how to make them like it's the easiest thing in the world, it was so cute.
My 5th grade class is so amazing!! Seriously, those 8 kids are all wonderful. They are so smart and mostly very well behaved. I cannot wait to see how much they grow and learn throughout this year! I can see many of these kiddos doing huge things when they get older. Most of them are in the band and are also talented little musicians. Seriously, they're just great kids.
I'm having a bit more trouble with the 6th graders. They're sweet kids and several of them are really bright. But they are so hard to keep on task. It already feels like a losing battle with them when I have to tell them like 5 times to do something before they all actually listen. On that note, if anyone had any ideas for classroom management with 6th graders, please send them my way! These 8 kids have the potential to do really well in class, they just don't seem to care. They'd rather be doing random art projects or playing with their band stuff or talking to each other. I don't get that because I was always the kid who wanted to be in class.
Some things this week have been incredibly frustrating. There has been a lack of communication, near constant schedule changes, classes moving much slower than I anticipated, reteaching things that the class appeared to understand very well the first time around, a lack of books and materials for planning/ teaching, and just some general confusion. I've tried not to make comparisons to the American public school system, but that's been hard. When we're cutting classes down to practice for a parade, it's tough not to get annoyed and want to point out that we're losing valuable learning time.
But it has also been so great. The moments when we're talking about a new topic and I can tell that the kids are actually understanding it are so so wonderful. Totally worth all of the other frustration. I'm eager to see how things improve as we move through the year and I figure out the best ways to reach each group of kids.
For now, I'm happy to have survived my first week and am ready to enjoy a restful weekend with the other teachers!
Talk to you soon, world!
No comments:
Post a Comment