Me and my 12 kiddos (2 were absent).
They did great in the morning, the afternoon was considerably more rough. I showed up to pick them up after lunch and 3 were missing - running the halls of the other building apparently.
The after school "enrichment" program turned out to be an extra hour to do a pre-assigned worksheet that was way above the level of my kids. Instead of stopping them I tried to work in small groups and one on one, which meant that while I was teaching 1 kid, 11 others were building towers with base ten blocks or seeing if they could get them to stick to their forehead.
Bad teaching - bad managing. Tomorrow will be different. Come on teacher self, you know better than to let chaos happen.
And then there were the fights - 2 of them - on the way back from lunch. The first one stopped when I issued a consequence. The second one didn't, so I stepped in between them and said, "Who do you think you are? My students don't punch each other." They both gave me an 'I can't believe she just said that' look, and joined the others in line. Looking back I can't believe I said that either. We do funny things in moments like that...
There were many great moments, like seeing their faces when I told them my principal said they have potential, and getting them to realize that that meant both he AND I believe they can do ANYTHING. And the times they corrected each other for being disrespectful, and how they follow procedures like lining up and moving to the rug so perfectly we didn't have to practice either one.
I got 4 hugs on the way out today. After the manipulative throwing and fights and craziness and way too many worksheets and just plain bad teaching, I got hugs.
Kiddos, I promise you I will work harder for you than I ever have anyone in my entire life.
1 comment:
Sounds like you had a good first day...a little rocky, sure, but you're all just beginning to get used to each other. Sounds like quite the group too...what grade?
Keep up the great work Miss G!
;o)
Post a Comment