Although I am thisclose to falling into the teacher's weekend sleep coma (teachers know what I am talking about), I wanted to post a bit about my first week with students and how things are going here in Vermont.
This kids came on Tuesday, and although I was somewhat nervous, there is a great deal of difference between the specter of 20 kids depending on you to teach them and 1 kid depending on you to teach them. As I told everyone at work after the day was over on Tuesday, it's so nice to be able to put out the fires that occur and deal with problem behavior (or "challenges" as we call them) without having to also simultaneously distract and entertain 19 other children who may or may not be aware that that the problem is occurring and I am on the verge of tearing on my hair and/or bursting into tears. No, in my new job, a kid misbehaves, and I can give them my full attention, which is something of a gift.
There are a couple of other awesome aspects to my job as well. The first is the fact that stress is at a minimum as far as pushing academics is concerned. Our jobs are partly to provide schooling for the kids, but also to help them deal with their other issues, too, so if we spend a class processing feelings instead of doing our lesson plan, that's ok (at least in theory. It's still kind of frustrating to me, but I'm getting used to it). The other awesome thing is that the curriculum is totally open-ended. This semester, I am teaching units on Japan, terrorism, forensics, and web design. It spans the gammit, and it's awesome.
On a totally unrelated note, I'm really excited about the prospect of making muffins for next week.
And now, that comasleep.
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