Always Learning

So now that I have been teaching for three days, I have more thoughts than just random “I don’t know what I am doing.” I am realizing that I will always learn something new every day of my teaching career. Today I have been learning that teaching is teaching me how to slow down and focus on the kids the whole day and not on myself. Today when they were napping and I was trying to cut some things out for a bulletin board I was thinking, what I am doing? I could easily do this when they leave for the day, why now? (Because they were restless and moving around a lot and getting up a lot and trying to not nap and I just kept mindlessly redirecting them to lay back down without taking the time to go and talk to them about it or rub their back or anything.) I am learning how to focus on the kids more than the details of getting the many random tasks teachers have to do done throughout the days. So tomorrow, all kids all day and random things after they leave.

A few more random things that have happened:
I have one kid who HATES nap time. Every single time he starts crying, and kind of out of the blue. Like the kids are quiet and he is laying down and all of a sudden he just jumps up weeping and just runs over to me saying, “I want my mommy and daddy.” And it was sad but kind of funny because right before naptime one of the other boys goes, “I bet he is going to start crying again…” kind of making fun of him but not trying to. It was sad and cute. But anyways today, as I predicted, he started crying so I had him work with me for a little bit on an assessment I had to do then had him lay down and rubbed his back and he actually fell asleep! Talk about an accomplishment in room 131.

They are just learning how to have friends for the first time and it is so cute. We do some switching of the classes, so some of the kids leave my room to go to another room because of their test scores of what they took this week (they try to chunk the kids for the betterment of their learning so some of the higher and lower kids get moved around the first week.) And so anyways when we walk in the halls they have to have a bubble in their mouth so no one can talk and I am pretty scrict about it especially for the first few weeks I will be. So anyways we were walking and one of our old students who moved classes walked by and one of my current students was like shouting his name, for so long, and the only reason I didn’t stop him is because he was saying, “Hello, hello. Hey do you want to be my friend still? Do you want to be my friend?” And then finally the kid heard him and said, “yes.” It was just so sweet.

At recess all of a sudden one of my girls sprinted up to me crying so hard and I could see why immediately. Her hajib (the head scarf the women wear) had fallen off accidentally. Anyways she was just standing there crying and couldn’t even tell me what happened which was really sad to watch, plus I don’t know culturally what that would be like (which I am still looking into and will most likely write more about once I know). Anyways I didn’t know if for her it felt like her shirt had fallen off or maybe her hair had fallen out or what… so right away I put it back on and she was pretty shook up about it for a little while. All of my girls wear them, so I have never seen any of their hair before. It was just an interesting part of teaching at this particular school.

Today we walked around the hallways for like 20 minutes to practice being quiet and in a line, which is really risky as a first year teacher bc all of the staff could see me when I would walk by their room and if my students were a mess it would totally be a reflection of me, so that is why it took me until today to do it. But I have to say my kids were AWESOME, they were practically acting like first graders who actually kind of know what to do. It was by far the highlight of my day.

That’s all for now… I wonder what tomorrow will bring.