First day of school

Oh. my. goodness. That day just made me appreciate everyone who has ever taught me absolutely anything in my life. Teachers do not have it easy!

My first day was...really overwhelming, and really, really exhausting. I don't even know where to start writing this blog- just reliving the day via writing sounds really overwhelming to me right now! It wasn't that today was a disaster... it wasn't. My students were vivacious, but overall they weren't poorly behaved for their age group. I just spent the whole day feeling absolutely and completely woefully inadequate. I am just not equipped for this job! I don't know how to do it!

Let me start by talking about the children, because they're why I'm here. And quite honestly, I already love them. They are absolutely, absolutely, adorable. I even love the troublemakers (there are quite a few of them!), even though I'm trying to be tough on them these first few days. We had two periods of P.E. today, but they haven't been able to hire a P.E. teacher at the school, so our instructions were simply to "take them outside and play." So I got a soccer ball for the children who wanted to play soccer, and played clapping games and thumb war with some of the girls for about two hours....and I loved every second of it! These kids are so, so cute. Plus, they keep hugging me and hanging on me and just melting my heart.

As a side note to that, though- we were told that a lot of these kids come from really, really broken families and are never shown any love, which is why some of them might be overly affectionate. I ran into that problem a little bit, with a little girl in my class. I'll call her Ally, which is a shortened version her real name. As soon as we went out for recess, she ran over and gave me a really big hug. I thought it was so sweet and hugged her back (they're a lot more lax here about teachers showing affection for students than in the states) but then I couldn't shake this little girl. She kept coming back for hugs, and when I was playing with the other children she would actually grab my hands and pull me towards her to get me to pay attention to her. At one point I had to say, 'Ally, I love getting hugs from you, but maybe you could save some of them so that they're super special when you decide to give them to me.' I also had to remove myself from the hand-clapping games because the children were lining up in front of me to take turns playing with me, and finally I just said that I was done playing for the day and that they needed to play with each other. I can't be these children's mothers or friends- they need to learn how to play together. I think the social aspect of this job will end up being really challenging as well.

Anyway, my problem today just stemmed from me! And a little bit from the school administration. Pretty much everything in my lesson plan for today had to get tossed, because right at the beginning I realized that these children were not nearly at the level I expected them to be. First of all, they can barely understand or speak English. It's hard enough explaining something to a second grader, let alone one who can't speak the language being used. Then, I asked them all how old they are...and the majority of them are six. Six years old! Six years old is so young, I expected them all to be seven or eight....aren't most second graders in the U.S. at least seven years old? So while I was trying to help them fill out a fairly simple "getting to know you sheet" and explain to them the many rules that the school tries to enforce, and deal with a bunch of six year olds who would literally come up to me, wave their hands in my face, and yell "miss! miss! (read with spanish accent: meeeesss! meeeees!), I felt a very panicky feeling that I just don't know how to do this. I don't know how to run a classroom! How do you entertain six year olds and teach them how to multiply at the same time? I felt so boring. I played all the games with them that I know- 'around the world' type games- but then I ran out of ideas! I literally stood there for a second this afternoon thinking, 'uuhh..now what?' because everything I had planned just wouldn't work for these kids! I wanted to be fun and exciting but I felt like I didn't know how to do that. I just don't know how to manage a classroom. It's not anyone's fault, the kids aren't bad, I never made any claims to know how to teach- but I have never, ever been in a position like this, where I just thought, "wow, I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing." I'm just so ill-equipped.

The administration told us to spend the first three days of school reviewing, and then start with the curriculum on Thursday. Well, I printed out a bunch of pages from their first grade math book to help the children review, and I can testify right now that they just couldn't do it. They don't speak english! I spoke to the first grade teacher this week, and he told me that they can understand english and that they are exactly where they're supposed to be. (I'm not going to directly comment on said teacher on this blog, but suffice it to say that his arrogance makes me question his judgment about his students' comprehension levels.) Anyway, I'm hoping that they are just rusty with their English from the summer, because if they just straight up can't understand it, it will be a very long year. So that's the first problem- I don't know how to review with them. The second problem is with the curriculum itself. It's very nice because the curriculum is extremely detailed, and tells us exactly what to cover each day. However, the curriculum is written for rich, American, english-speaking children. The curriculum calls for resources that the school simply does not have, and we are trying to apply this curriculum to who are learning in a language that their parents can't speak. This is their second language. So we are in a very difficult position.

I don't know if any teachers are reading this, but if you are...please send me advice. I don't know how to do this! I feel very inadequate, and I feel so bummed because I already love these children and want them to have a really great year. We were also just told today that the school couldn't hire an art teacher, either...so I am running art class tomorrow. agggh. So...also send ideas for art projects?

It's only the first day. But it did not go the way I wanted it to! gahhhhh... is it the weekend yet?