Encouragement

Mrs. T is a reading-teacher expert and was transfered to our school to assist with reading instruction. After I taught an English reading lesson in my bilingual coworker's classroom, I saw Mrs. T peering into his classroom and reading my lesson from the board. I walked by and heard her say, "Wow, good." Then she turned to me: "I was just reading his lesson. That's good."

Later, I lined my students up to go to the library and gave them a brief lecture, hoping to avoid last-week's embarrassing library outing. Mrs. T was in the hallway tutoring a student, and when my students filed out, she whispered, "That was the best piece of discipline I have ever heard. The way you talk to them is excellent."

I desperately needed that encouragement this week.

Unwanted spontinaity

I came into work this morning feeling fairly prepared. I had my lessons ready, and I had a vague idea of what I would have my substitute teach tomorrow while I attended a bilingual meeting. All of my plans were nullified, however, when my bilingual coworker told me we had the wrong date; our meeting was today, and the substitute was waiting in the office.

The morning was a frantic scramble as I tried to prepare my class and modify my lesson plans. Somehow, though, I managed to teach a decent reading lesson and leave my substitute with detailed math instructions for the afternoon. The bilingual meeting was very helpful, too.

3rd-week fears

Spanglish was the language of the day. I need a way to keep my Spanish up over the weekend.

Just when I was losing control of my class during a game of numeric order, a coworker knocked on my door with three of my boys. She'd caught them, she said, when they crashed into her table while running back from the bathroom. I glared down at them, and all three broke out in frantic streams of unintelligible Spanish.

Although not really a bad day, today was kind of discouraging. My kids are so low, and I'm falling behind in my lesson plans trying to get them caught up. I've started using restroom breaks to review addition and subtraction; we have so much to cover and very few hours in our days.

I haven't felt like this in a while, like I've a task before me that I may be unable to accomplish. College presented some challenges, but nothing that a few late nights couldn't overcome, really. Now I've been given 22 students, some of whom still cannot read, and I'm told to get them caught up enough to pass a challenging test in 6 months. Gah.

And what about the language problem? I'm not doing my job when I resort to Spanglish. How long will it take for all those verb conjugations to come naturally and for my academic vocabulary to be sufficient for what I'm teaching? Also, this week I begin administering a diagnostic reading test to my students. Do I really speak enough of their language to accurately assess their abilities?

And now I come to the part of the post where I say, "but it's not as bad as I'm making it sound." And no, it isn't as bad. I'm quite sure I'll figure it all out; I haven't a choice. I'll get classroom management under control, I'll learn how to teach around the language struggles, and I'll find a way to bring my lower students where they need to be. Still, the possibility of failure is an unpleasant sensation.

Paycheck

I got my first one today. This first check brought more money than any summer ever yielded. Perhaps adulthood does have a few perks.

Roller coastering

As if in recompense for yesterday, today couldn't have been much improved. Due to an alarm malfunction this morning, I was granted an extra 45 minutes of sleep. On the way to work, I opened a birthday present and listened to the radio. Yesterday's nausea had vanished with the extra sleep, the kids were pretty well behaved, and the time passed quickly.

A few of the day's deductions:
-The benefits of an extra half-hour of sleep (mainly, the ability to think of my feet) may surpass the benefits of an extra half-hour of planning.
-Happiness is a helpful ingredient in classroom management; the kids lose their desire to misbehave when they've no power over the teacher's mood.

My own "Jonah Day"

After a sleepless night, I began my 22nd birthday feeling dizzy and nauseous. I grabbed a granola bar, slapped some peanut butter on a piece of bread for lunch, and hit the road.

Throughout the day, I was preparing for activities mere minutes before I taught the lessons. My Spanish was atrocious, as bad as it was on the first day. I forgot words I'd been saying for an entire week, and my students eventually told me, "Just say it in English." I had to work through lunch. My students insisted on misbehaving, and I was cross with them and unwilling to laugh. One little girl looked so guilty when her pencil slipped that I was reminded of Anne Shirley's "Jonah Day" and that unfortunate pencil squeak.

After school, my mentor asked me how I got the three lowest second-graders and suggested I trade some with another teacher. I got home at 6 and crawled, shivering, to bed. Half an hour later, I began an evening of working on lesson plans.

I still haven't relinquished the childhood notion that birthdays should be a notch above the rest of the year, but this birthday provided a rather prosaic entrance into the world of adulthood.

Really, my day wasn't as awful as it sounds. Nothing went horribly wrong, my aid led my students in singing "Happy Birthday," my coworkers gave me a gift, and my evening of work was broken up by several phone calls from around the country. I'm almost glad I had a bad day; last week's perfection had me slightly worried. In the words of Longfellow:

Thy fate is the common fate of all,
Into each life some rain must fall,
Some days must be dark and dreary.