This Year I'm Doing it All . . .

. . . Saturday Academy for three hours each week, Extended Day twice a week for an hour and a half, and a "study group" every Wednesday for two hours (not to mention this week was parent-teacher conferences!). I'm exhausted! But I'm making it through. And after three whole days, I finally made it to yoga so I'm feeling good.

Now that it gets dark so early it's hard to do anything but go straight home after school. As I'm walking out of the building at 5:15 it feels like I should have been home hours ago and already in my sweats and making dinner. It takes everything I have to remember that 5:15 really isn't late at all. If it were May, it would be afternoon and I'd be feeling thankful that I'm a teacher and have a chance to be free and out of work so early. But for now, it's dark and cold for another few months.

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Extended Day went sooo much better today than last Thursday (which was our first session). Coming into the class not knowing the kids (they are fourth graders that I don't normally work with), not knowing the materials I'd be working with (the AP gave me the books 15 minutes after the session started), not having any snack provided by the school, and--seemingly insignificant, but--not having working clocks that day, really spelled disaster for the end of a long day.

Today however, I came in prepared: I put the desks in a new seating arrangement (one long table with all the kids), brought pretzels (to be handed out to on-task students), and came armed with some better teaching strategies. It made all the difference and today the class a pleasure. The time flew by and before I knew it we had just 20 minutes to complete our last section and go over it. I don't know if the timing felt better to the kids too but at least with the clocks working they didn't have to ask me the time every two minutes.

There is one girl that is driving me crazy though. She always wants to read, answer the question, or add to what someone else said. If she doesn't get to talk every time she starts getting really frustrated. The first day I finally snapped and yelled at her about there being nine other kids in the room and she can't speak all the time; she has to wait her turn. Today I was a little more patient. I also tried to make the turns predictable by having them read and answer round robin-style so she knew when her turn was. I had wanted to write names on popsicle sticks to draw randomly but I didn't have time to prepare that for today. At one point I was really trying to get the kids to understand that getting the wrong answer isn't something to be embarrassed about; now is the time to talk about our answers so that we can figure out why we got the wrong answer and be able to get it right the next time. Well, she really took that to heart and (I swear) when I asked "did anyone get an answer other than C" (which we had just determined to be the right answer), she said that she first chose D but then changed her mind and put C (and then she went on and on as to why). I was sitting right next to her and she picked C the first time. So she wants to share out so badly that she is willing to lie and say she got the wrong answer because she knew I was only calling on kids with the wrong answer at that point. Seriously, I don't know how to deal with her. Somehow I have to tame her a little bit if I am not going to go batty every week. Ideas?

Newcomer English

Saturday school was not bad at all today.

I got to school with a minute to spare (I forgot to account for weekend train delays). I had just three students. I was hoping for all five but two of the boys have Saturday school at their church--or their mother would have brought them "con mucho gusto," she told me as she dropped off their younger brother who is in Kindergarten. I told the AP that he didn't really need to come. I thought he was doing pretty well in his regular class and was progressing nicely but she said it couldn't hurt. He actually seemed really disoriented during the first part of the morning and probably didn't understand why he was at school on a Saturday without his brothers or classmates. He warmed up though, and so did the other two girls. We had a lot of fun and they were all speaking more than I've ever hear them. (That is repeating after me in English and trying to explain things to me in Spanish, and occasionally attempting to try out some new words or phrases on their own.)

We did my basic first ESL lessons today. A lot of "What is this?" "This is a (insert item you're pointing at)" to get them used to asking and answering about new vocab. We did a lot of TPR (total physical response) to practice things they will often hear their teachers asking them to do in class. We took a tour of the school learning the names of the different rooms (such as library, office, lunch room). You would think that after almost two months of school they would have picked up some of these words but most of the words they didn't know or couldn't produce on their own. Actually the Kindergarten boy knew more then two girls (in second and third grades) did in most cases. He has been in the country about nine months longer than they have and he went to Pre-K at the school for part of last year.

Over all it was a good day and it went by really fast. I was happy with what we were able to accomplish today. It's really unfortunate that my schedule is so full that I don't have a separate time in my schedule for these kids during the regular school day because it is so crucial. I'm glad that I was given the opportunity to teach this Saturday class though.

Saturday . . . School

It's my third year teaching and I'm finally going to teach Saturday school. I was so hoping that I would get the position and now that I have it I'm sort of wondering what I've gotten myself into. It won't be so bad. Just 10am-1pm. And there are only two Saturdays in October (well, there were three but for some reason they didn't tell me I was teaching it until after the first day) and then none in November (one is canceled due to Thanksgiving, and another due to the AP and some teachers taking a day trip to Atlantic City, and the others I'm not sure about). In any case, it's really good that I am teaching Saturdays because I will finally get a chance to see all of my newcomers in a separate group, that is beginners in English rather than grade-level groups. I just don't have time for that in my regular school schedule.

Even with Saturday school I'm planning on having an awesome day tomorrow. I'm going to go see the Jane Jacobs exhibition at the Municipal Arts Society and then a yoga class at Yoga to the People. I've finally found a yoga class that I love and now I'm addicted. I've been going four or five times a week for the past few weeks. Another great thing about the studio is that it's donation based so you "pay what you want." Finally yoga is affordable!