an afternoon of... monkeys

once i was settled into my school and had met all of my classes between the 6th and 5th graders my teacher sat me down to go over a few things, including:
1. my payday and my check
2. what will come out of my check every month
3. she explained the sort of teachers union that i had to pay into.
4. and a whole list of other things i don't remember and have written somewhere.
5. she also explained that where i stood now i only had 21 teachers hours (GEPIK requires 22). this meant she was going to have to find another hour for me to teach somewhere in the school. and boy did she.

i was informed i would be teaching 1st/2nd graders after school one day a week. this is the grade i though i was going to be teaching originally, so when i heard this i was super excited. i was told that i needed to fill out a schedule of some sort to give to the teacher as to what i will be teaching. my mind flooded with ideas that i started writing down. i looked things up and got awesome ideas of things to do with them.

the next wednesday came around and i showed my teacher what i had done so far. she shook her head and said, "oh, no they don't know English at all" uh... great. so now i am back to square one with a blank slate and no idea where to start. i figured the alphabet would be the best place to begin. you can't really do anything with the English language if you don't know the alphabet.

so here we go.... the alphabet. simple enough to teach right.... WRONG. oh so very wrong. thursday afternoon came and my teacher directed me towards the room where the kids would be. i heard the kids before i saw the room. they were that loud. once we turned the corner it was as if i had entered the part of the zoo that held the monkeys... they were everywhere. running around, jumping, throwing things, screaming, standing on tables and hitting anything they could get their hands on. i walked in and was instantly swarmed with children coming up and touching me. literally, they would come up and touch me, giggle and run away. all 24 of them. the monkey business continued through my whole lesson. it might have been a bit calmer, but not by much. the teacher had absolutely no control over them at all. once she got one sitting down, another would jump up and run off and the vicious cycle continued for the full hour. and when i say hour i mean 45 minutes.

over the last three weeks i have learned:
1. i am very happy not teaching 1st/2nd graders full time. i have come to appreciate and really enjoy my 5th/6th graders.
2. to use lots of hand motions when trying to simply explain things. and drawings, even though we all know i am a terrible artist.
3. if they aren't going to stay sitting down, i am not going to worry about them. the teacher in the room said she would take care of it and i should just keep going through my lesson.

yesterday was a bit of a different story. i walked into the room like i always do 5 minutes early so i have time to set everything up, and all... let me say that again, ALL the students were sitting down and the said, "hi mychaela (or some form of my name) teacher!" i was in shock. from there i went to the computer as usual, plugged in my jump drive, opened the songs and began the lesson. that's about as far as most of the students got. the boys were up running around and the usual began. i have become used to this, so i expected it. what i did not expect was my teacher raising her voice a bit and started writing names on the board. kids instantly started sitting down.

i was successfully able to make it through my whole lesson and actually have a finished product i plan on laminating to hang in the room. this also means this girl gets to color at work! yes! by the end of class i was exhausted.

once we were finished i said goodbye and all the kids either ran and gave me a hug, high five or screamed "goodbye teacher" as i walked out the door to put my shoes back on. the teacher came running after me, came out and handed me a chocolate bar and gave me a giant hug. she said thank you about 12 times and said "you are wonderful" it made my day.

the kids are growing on me... slowly.