Ok, so I promised an entry about how teaching is going. Before I get into the details of lessons and instruction and multi-level insanity, let me just first start by saying that the kids really are great. On the first day they started out really shy, but they warmed up to me very quickly. While they have their faults and they certainly argue with one another a lot because they are all related in some way, they really seemed excited to meet me and to have me here. They are already asking when I have to leave and if I can just stay. You have to understand that these kids have already had 3 different teachers in the span of about 3 ish months and are about to have a 4th when the next teacher arrives. They get attached to one teacher and then they leave and another comes in to take their place. That’s not the way that it’s supposed to work – the first teacher was supposed to stay for an extended time – but that’s how it has worked. So I guess I can’t blame them when they act out or misbehave…they’ve had a bit of a rough year so far. Anyhow, they are all a lot of fun. They like to sing songs and play games and ask me all sorts of questions. They get excited over the funniest things, and they really do like me a lot, which makes me feel good. It does make me happy to know that I am making a positive impact on the lives of these kids.
Alrighty then…on to teaching. The first two days of teaching, I really wasn’t sure I was going to make it. On Monday, I felt like it was the hardest day of teaching I had ever experienced, and Tuesday wasn’t much better. I was getting a little bit discouraged and losing confidence in myself because this kind of teaching is just so hard. Multi-level classrooms are so complicated. It doesn’t help the situation that I have 7 students who are all related in some way or another, so they fight like cats and dogs. The smallest little things set them off. Every day I have had students leave whatever we were doing to go cry in the corner because so and so called them a name, or took something from them, or didn’t let them have a turn. It’s seriously ridiculous and I don’t know how to fix it because there’s no way to change the fact that they are all related. I think one thing that I have learned is that kids are more likely to be mean to each other when they are closely related then they are if they’re not, so that has been a challenge to deal with.
Gym on the first day was a nightmare. I thought that I would play a simple game of link tag with them, but nobody wanted to link arms with the opposite gender. Then I tried to come up with another game. I remembered playing red light green light when I was little, so I tried that. It worked for a short time, but then people were getting upset because they weren’t getting a turn with calling the lights and people were cheating. They wanted to play a freeze tag game, so I let them……there were disagreements over who tagged who, and somebody tagged so hard that they slammed another kid into the ground. That was the end of that game. Finally I resorted to Simon Says….not a very physical game at all, but I was all out of ideas and no matter what we played it seemed like someone was going to get upset. To be fair, I’ve never taught PE before, and that is not what I went to school for, so teaching it is really a new and foreign experience for me, and it’s not necessarily a surprise that my first day with it was not a success.
The first two days I felt incredibly stressed and disappointed. It seemed like I should be able to handle a classroom of 7 students, but 7 students in a multi-level classroom is so much more difficult than 20 or even 30 students all in one grade. It is seriously a juggling act trying to keep all of the students busy and occupied while I work with the different groups. Thankfully I do have a classroom aide, Dora, but she is not in my room all day, and for the first 2 days she was gone during math time because the schedule was different from usual. I tried, but it is impossible for me by myself to orchestrate groups and get them to run smoothly without having catastrophes, so unless Dora is there, I don’t even try to do group rotations.
So basically, the first two days of teaching were the hardest I have ever experienced, and I was pretty discouraged when they were through. I was not sure that I would survive for four weeks. But I guess that God is watching out for me, even when I’m not paying very close attention to him. On Wednesday (coincidentally also my birthday) the head teacher, Linda, came into my classroom in the morning while I was getting ready for the day and told me what a great job I was doing and not to stress out and to just have fun with the kids (what a nice birthday present J) . She also said that the classroom aide, Dora, had come to her and asked if they couldn’t just keep me. After the first two days of craziness, disappointment, and exhaustion it was exactly what I needed to hear to keep me going. I guess that God must have known I needed a little boost J Linda has told me what a great job I am doing on multiple other occasions since then as well. It definitely feels good to have her say that, but it is also really interesting to think about because I feel like all I’m doing is surviving and keeping my head above water, but I guess in this kind of situation that is an accomplishment. I have purposefully been intentional about not killing myself over little things or wearing myself out with trying to do more than I can handle. I am only here for three more weeks and while I want to do a good job and have fun with the kids, it’s not going to do anybody any good if I’m too worn out and exhausted to get anything done. I guess that has been paying off if the head teacher is telling me and other people (she said she wrote someone from the district about me) what a great job I’m doing. Again, I don’t feel like I’m doing anything spectacular, but I suppose that getting through the lessons I need to get through with the kids, keeping them moving along and making progress, and making it through each day without any total disasters is more than many people would be able to do. So while I don’t think that I’m a perfect or spectacular teacher in any way, I do have to say that I am pretty proud of myself for being able to do this as a barely graduated elementary education major and have people tell me I’m doing a good job…I guess that’s saying something.
So maybe people are interested in what a typical day in the classroom is like. Well, right now I have 7 students (I will have 8 as of this coming Friday because one of the girls who was on vacation is coming back). Ethan is doing Kindergarten work, Lyric and Darren are doing 1st grade work, Angelina, Tony, and Isaac are doing 2nd grade work, and Lydia is doing 3rd grade work. In the morning the whole school (all 20 something students) meet in the gym for an assembly where we have announcements and say the pledge of allegiance. Then we return to the classroom and start right away with our reading and language lessons. The way things work with teaching lessons is that Dora and I each teach a student or a small group of students who are at the same level and we rotate. I start out working with Ethan doing a spelling lesson and reading lesson from the Reading Mastery curriculum. I then go over his language workbook and worksheet with him and he returns to his seat to complete his assignments, which mostly consist of identifying letters and sounds. Dora starts out working with Angelina, Isaac, and Tony doing the same kind of thing, except at a 2nd grade level. Lydia starts out doing independent work at her desk, and Lyric and Darren start out at the computers in the back of the room doing literacy activities and games. All of the students or groups of students (except Lydia who doesn’t do computer activities) rotate between having a lesson with either me or Dora, doing independent work, and doing their computer literacy activities. After my lesson with Ethan I do a spelling and reading lesson with Lyric and Darren. They have to spell the words that I say (whatever is on the list for the lesson that day in the Reading Mastery book) and write any that they misspell 5 times, then we work on letter sounds and reading words and learn how to sound out and read words with new sounds, and finally we read a short story out of their reading book together. Then they go back to their seats to do their workbook and worksheet for the day. While I am working with them Lydia works with Dora, Ethan works on the computer, and Angelina, Isaac, and Tony work on their independent work until it is their turn on the computer. Once we are done teaching lessons the students complete their independent and computer work. And that’s pretty much how our reading and language part of the day goes. It will be a little bit different once Katlynn (the student who is gone) returns because Dora and I will have to switch students around a little bit, but hopefully it won’t throw a wrench in things too much.
After that part of the day is over Dora moves on to her next classroom and I do calendar and read a story with the students. Story time is probably my favorite because everyone is sitting down and listening, which doesn’t happen very often. Calendar is always interesting because the kids fight about whose turn it is to do what. To help with this problem I created a calendar list so that we can rotate jobs and nobody will get mad about whether it is their turn or not. After calendar and story time is PE…probably one of my least favorite parts of the day because I just don’t have very much experience with physical education, and it always seems like there is at least one student who gets hurt or upset. I do have a PE activity book which I use sometimes and it helps, but the activities never seem to take long enough or keep them interested, so I’m usually scrambling for games to play or things to do that won’t get someone hurt or cause an argument. I’m still learning, but thankfully after I’m done here I won’t have to teach gym again anytime soon J After gym is lunch, which is my break time to spend by myself….a part of the day that I always look forward to. After lunch, which never seems to last long enough, the students come back and we all go into the middle school classroom to do buddy reading with the big kids for 20 minutes. After that we go back to our classroom and attempt to do some math. This past week I actually only had Dora in my room for math on one day because it was a weird week schedule wise. Math is also a group rotation kind of operation and without Dora I just can’t manage it on my own. If Dora is in the room she takes a group and I take a group and we do math lessons (we use Envision math) with some students while others play math games or do activities on their own. If Dora is not in the room (which I don’t always know whether or not she will be until math comes around) then I kind of just wing it. On one day I had the kids play with blocks and do math activity types of things, on another day I had some fun math number worksheets for them to do, and on another day I gave all the students counting cubes and their own white boards and we practiced addition and subtraction problems. So far math just kind of happens whenever it is able to happen. If Dora’s not there we do our best, and if she is then we do a lesson. After math there’s not really anything specific scheduled. I kind of just try to pick a different thing to do to get us to the end of the day. A lot of times I’ll let the kids do some kind of art activity (which they love) while I read a story to them, or we’ll do a writing activity together. On Thursday I had them each come up with a line or a sentence to create their own class Halloween story, and then on Friday they each wrote the part they came up with and drew a picture to go along with it. I posted the story with their pictures out in the hall. It was pretty fun. After that I give them a little bit of free time to play at the end of the day, and then we clean up, I pass out homework, and they go home.
It’s a pretty exhausting day. Even though I have a general plan for how things are going to go each day, it never happens exactly the way I plan and there’s always a lot of improvising and flying by the seat of my pants. I’m getting pretty good at filling in with activities that I come up with off the top of my head. Overall, this kind of teaching is incredibly challenging. The first week has been hard, but after the first two days things have gotten a bit better and I feel like I’m starting to get the hang of things even though they can be pretty unpredictable at times. I guess the important thing is that I survived the first week, so the hardest part is over. Now I know that I can do this, even if it is really hard, and hopefully the next three weeks will fly by.
I am learning a lot and I am enjoying myself and I am glad that I came, but it can be pretty lonely here and you seriously don’t realize how much you take common luxuries for granted until you don’t have them. It’s not like I’m living without electricity or running water or anything like that…my apartment is really nice, but I can’t just pop on over to a friend’s house to hang out or run to the store to rent a movie or buy some eggs. I’m glad that the opportunity for a one month bush teaching experience came about. I have already learned so much, and I know that I will learn so much more before I leave. This is an amazing opportunity, even if it’s not fun and easy all the time, but I will be happy to go home when it is time, and I think that I will have had my taste of bush teaching. I’m thankful for the chance to do this, and I won’t be able to replace what I learn and take away from being here, but I don’t think I could commit to a 2 year or longer job. I know I’m still in Alaska, but it’s too far away from my family and friends. I’m glad that I have had the chance to learn this for myself, and now I know and I didn’t have to commit to a 2 year long job before I found that out. I am going to try and get the most out of this experience while I am here, and I think that when I return to subbing in a regular classroom it will seem like a cinch compared to multi-level teaching….so that’s a good thing. I think that this experience will give me the confidence that I need to teach in a regular classroom. And if that is what I can gain from this experience, then I’m thankful for it.
