First Day Of School

Today was my first day of actually teaching for an entire period. It was my responsibility to come up with a lesson plan, explain it, and make sure the kids knew what was going on. I will make an overall judgment on the day by saying it was quite interesting. The teacher warned me that it was a pretty crazy class and she was not lying. On top of their outgoing personalities, there were SO many things that had me gagging which I will just have to get used to and always have antibacterial stuff around! I say this because in that one 45 minute class, I had four kids dripping with snot and touching everything. And the finale.......a girl threw up all over the table! If that is not a welcome into teaching, I don't know what is. But in all of that, I loved it! I am so excited that my job is going to be teaching kids how to make cool arts and crafts. I was really worried about if teaching was what I even wanted to do because I hate public speaking and I always felt that if I dread doing that, then how can I get up in front of a class and do that every day? But it is so different. I feel so comfortable and confident in what I am doing and I can't imagine doing anything else.

One thing that did break my heart today was a little girl's comment she made about her artwork. She kept asking to get new paper to redo the assignment. I told her that her work was beautiful just the way it was. She kept saying it is horrible and after a couple more times of me encouraging her that it was fine she said, "Well my mom will say it is horrible." Now I don't know anything about this girl and maybe her mother actually wouldn't say that, but it just makes me feel terrible that a second grader could feel that pressure and have such low self-esteem about themselves from their own parent. I also don't think the teacher in the class is that encouraging either. Maybe I am just naive about teaching and things are different when you are with the same kids every day, but I never heard her go around and compliment the student's work or really even have that much interaction with them besides harshly reprimanding them. I understand you need to set rules and implement them, but I also believe that respect and kindness goes a long way too. These days of observation that I have been doing are really teaching me what to do AND not to do in my own classroom and I cannot wait until I can do this every day, even with the occasional throw up.