I've held off on writing this post because I wanted to give myself a little bit of time to digest all that's occurred this week.
Monday marked my first day at my new job. As I've mentioned before, I went into it with a bit of trepidation - mostly because I wasn't feeling particularly prepared, but I was also excited and ready to start.
So, I show up, go over to the cafeteria where snack was being served and begin to round up my first graders. On day one, I had about 9 of them. We walk (and I use this term VERY loosely) over to the classroom and get settled into the new room. I introduce myself and the program, the kind of stuff we're going to be doing and take attendance. So far, so good. I pass out some paper and crayons and ask them to draw a picture of something they're good at. Now, this is lesson #1 for me. I meant, draw a picture of something you believe your good at doing - trying to get at their strengths, interests, etc. They (of course) think I mean draw something that they're good at drawing. But hey, that works too. This kept most of their attention for, oh, let's say 10 minutes. Great, only 2.5 more hours to go.
Suddenly, all h-e-double hockey-sticks breaks loose. I've got two kids chasing a third around the classroom. I've got one punching the crap out of another. I've got one crying. I have one pulling on my arm pleading with me, "I want to do my homework!"
Using the loudest voice I have, I announce we're going to play "Simon Says." This is met with mostly cheers and the majority of the kids join me on the carpet. There are still a few running a muck, but hey, I'm doing what I can. Simon Says worked for maybe 5 minutes until the kids in the back decided that piling all their coats on the floor and jumping into them was way more fun.
Oh, and I've still got the one kid attached to me crying about wanting to do his homework. I tell him he's welcome to do his homework, but of course he can't do it on his own.
And so the day goes. We played every game I could come up with, but mostly the kids just ran wild. I yelled, I begged, I pleaded, I reasoned - all to no real avail. Mostly at 5:45 I was just glad they were all still alive and mostly in one piece.
I left that night thinking, "Yeah, this is not gonna work." But I was assured there would be a teacher with me the next day, so I came back on Tuesday. This may have been a big mistake.
Somehow on Tuesday I ended up with 32 kids. But having learned a few things, I managed to get them over to the school in a little bit more of an orderly fashion (well, until we were halfway there and they all broke into a run.) At this point I was still hopeful I would have a teacher waiting for us in the classroom, but... not so much. However, I did get all of them into seats and get test booklets passed out. (That's right, on day 2 after a full day of school, we wanted 32 first graders to take a math and reading placement test. Right....) But no sooner had I gotten the tests passed out then I realize, we don't have any sharpened pencils (as had been promised.) In the 20 minutes it took to manually sharpen 32 pencils, I had lost complete control of the classroom.
I had kids jumping off of desks. I had kids escaping into the hallway. I had kids jumping on each other. All in all, I think I sent 5 kids down to the office for medical attention (2 busted lips, two poked eyes, and 1 broken open scab.) Oh, yeah, and the kid that was being bounced on that puked.
I take full responsibility for obviously not having control over my classroom, but c'mon! I'm not a certified teacher. I really don't even have that much experience with this age group. I asked for help at least three times and was basically told that I needed to get stricter. I seriously spent 3/4 of the time threatening, yelling and sending kids to the principals office. I'm really not sure how much stricter I could be.
At the end of the night I pulled the site manager aside and said that if something didn't change I wasn't coming back the next day. We talked for a long time and I finally agreed to stay with the program if I could assist a teacher in a classroom rather than be the teacher. So I'm now helping out in a class of 6th and 7th graders.
All in all, it's going much better now. My first graders still run up to me in the cafeteria to give me hugs and tell me they want me to be their teacher. My 6th and 7th graders are slowly warming up to me. They're harder to win over, but easier to control. I actually got to help a few kids figure out one of their assignments yesterday and that felt good. Definitely more what I was looking for.
It's still not the best place ever, but I'm willing to keep giving it a try and see how it works out.
Monday I'm in charge of leading a drama class. Hmmm. We'll see how that goes. Wish me luck - I think I'll need it.
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