Wednesday, Nov 4

We had chapel today and Mr. Laurelais taught about Samson. The kids really liked it actually and were pretty attentive. I decided to sit with my kids instead of stand. I think I’m going to do it more often. I sat by some of my favorite kids (I know we aren’t supposed to have favorites, but come on, it’s going to happen) and they were just so cute sitting closer to me. One of my girls was playing with my hair, which felt great and one of my boys was asking me all these great questions. I wish that being a teacher required more of the relational part and not as much of the disciplinarian part. I enjoy being with my kids so much more when I don’t have to tell them to sit down, please be quiet, I need your attention. It’s refreshing to be able to hang out with them. I think that may be something I may be realizing is different with this job than the other experiences I’ve had with kids. With Young Life for example, my “job” was to form relationships/friendships with kids; I was more of a mentor/adult friend/leader and less of a disciplinarian. I feel the scales have tipped more the other way for teaching. It’s not bad, just something to get used to and figure out how I can best do my job being me and having the experiences I’ve had.
Today was kinda crazy too because I had to scramble to finish my recuperation tests for the kids who had failed reading and language so they could be copied before tomorrow. One thing that has been frustrating with these recup tests is that the kids are told they are taking these tests the day before. The tests are made by their teachers, but it covers all the material from the 9 weeks. Then the administration was like ‘There’s not enough room on the sheet we give their parents to tell them they are taking a test to put all the themes they need to study for the test.’ So we just had to give our kids the page numbers of what they should study. That’s hard even for a high schooler or someone in college. If they had planned ahead, these kids could know specifically what to study and have a better chance of doing well on this test. But now these kids don’t really have much of chance; I don’t know how many of my kids will really do better on this test than the other tests during the 9 weeks. Then it’s almost a waste of their time and our time. Other than that, today was a normal Wednesday of going to town after school for internet and groceries. We stayed pretty late and had some trouble getting mototaxis back up, but it ended up working out alright.