Beautiful Beginning of the First Full Week!

Day 18: Monday, August 27

I know for a fact, I am TRULY not the 'best teacher'
- but these children are SO full of
grace and forgiveness and love,
I'm very thankful for that!

I had an encouraging start to the morning, Marie (ERI teacher) said to me “tomorrow will  always come, and some days the kids will be too busy or distracted to get their work done.” I was really relieved to hear that from an experienced educator. Basically - I need to relax. One day at a time.

The Lord’s prayer wasn’t over the intercom, so we said it anyway! I was able to tell the kids I had been praying for them. I’m not sure WHAT exactly that means to them...but God sure is giving me SEVERAL opportunities to mention His name, it’s very comfortable here.

One student asked about Seth & Micaela :) So I showed them a picture I had printed of Kaitie, Jess & Micaela - and my face on a stick! They were giggling and thought it was so funny. To this day, they still ask to look at the picture and they comment on it. They also make comments about Micaela’s eyes - they are SO fascinated with her eyes. Not many people around here have blue eyes and Micaela’s are especially expressive and big, so they find her very intriguing! I’ve included a few pictures of the cards they made for Seth and Cael in this blog post.

This was pretty special: our class leader chose “Goldilocks & the 3 bears” as our read-aloud in the morning, so I told my kids about when I was in Grade 2: for public speaking, I went to the gym and told the story of Goldilocks to my whole school. I went up there with 3 teddy bears and the kids seemed to think that was neat. It blew my mind to consider that I was THEIR AGE when I did that...now I’m teaching them. I’m a little surprised I didn’t start bawling at that moment. Anyway, I’ve included a picture of myself in Grade 2, on that storytelling day. Somehow we also got sharing sleepwalking stories, so I was able to tell them about a time when I walked out of my room, down the hall, my arms full of books because I was “going to the library.” We had some good laughs that morning.

For the math lesson, they worked at a little booklet of worksheets - to see where they’re at...some flew threw the sheets and wanted more - some struggled....they showed me many different ways of figuring out addition: counting with fingers and your chin, writing/drawing pictures to count or using plastic counters...It was eye opening for me! My prayer is that they’re learning as much or more than I am!

I was helping one student and he insisted that “in Grade 1 math, 2+2 was 3!” I had some students helping each other - how beautiful! Unfortunately, ‘helping each other’ consisted of showing each other the answers...(insert a mini-lesson on helping versus copying here.) At one point, the maintenance man came into my classroom (as he often does) and offered to go and setup any of my furniture that hadn’t already been setup, yay! I gave him my key and thanked him a lot. There wasn’t much left to be done, but our living room tables and a couple of random things.

Grade 2 students are INCREDIBLY observant: they notice everything! If I change something in the classroom - like if I put something up on the wall, or even today, I was warm so I changed my shirt at lunch time ... instantly accused: “teacher, you changed your shirt!” Why yes, yes I did. I like how they catch me on absolutely EVERYTHING and yet there are still things that go over their heads...it’s very interesting. I don’t think this paragraph makes much sense - but I’m still trying to figure out their mentalities.

We tried a calendar song today (inspired by the lovely Grade 1 teacher, Ms. J - we used the same tune but I changed the words slightly and added spontaneous actions) - “Today is Monday, today is Monday, all day long, all day long! Yesterday was Sunday, yesterday was Sunday, tomorrow is Tuesday, tomorrow is Tuesday!” They seemed into it! 

I had a student come up to me and say “you look pretty.” Leave it to children to encourage you when you don’t feel so pretty!

For a health class, we reviewed the five senses - they should have learned about them in Grade one, and they did. I asked “why do we have five senses?” The expected answer is “to explore the world around us” - so that we can see, hear, taste, touch, smell. I was thinking to myself, “God wanted us to have five senses to enjoy and experience his creation...” I was SO excited when one of my girls said “because God made us that way!” :)

Incredibly stressful first experience: lost a student...well, sorta. I had been warned that this particular child would randomly take off - sometimes I should go and retrieve him, sometimes it’s impossible to round him up and it’s not a good idea to leave my 14 other students...I called home after school to explain that he took off during gym and I didn’t realize he had actually LEFT the school (sometimes he just roams the halls and because of his attention, I think he needs to) but he actually left, so I called home to ensure he made it safely...unfortunately, he wasn’t home at the first place I called...they called back to let me know he was at his grandparents - thank the LORD! Oh boy. What am I getting myself into. I think I cried a little bit, mostly with relief...and some fear at what was to come. The VP and another teacher reassured me that they weren’t concerned, this is a very typical scenario and it’s a safe community, so we don’t have to worry too much. All I can do is call and keep the parents/guardians informed. Okay. The VP also said, “make sure you don’t stay here all night, eh?” That was nice to hear, I don’t want to be a workaholic (and I’m DEFINITELY not) - but as a new teacher (and a slow one), I tend to stay at the school for a couple of hours, tidying up, making plans, thinking, etc. I felt her blessing to leave early some days. 

As I was driving home from school that day, I drove by a boy wearing a camouflage blanket, just wandering down the dirt road by himself...of course, that was my little runaway. Such a cutie.