Today is volunteer-day in TJ's first grade classroom. The children's smiles are so welcoming. I think I've grown attached to every single one of them. My son quickly picks this up and is always smiling with pride whenever any of his classmates gives me a hug or greets me with a smile. When I first volunteered in his classroom, I became wary of how I treat each one because I know my son is watching. I wasn't sure how he would react if he saw another child hug me, so I prevented that from happening. But that was in the beginning of the school year. He gleams when he sees any of his classmates playing with me or tend to a crying child.
Nothing breaks my heart more than a child who gets emotionally hurt and my son knows this (he does know when I know a fake, too).
The children look forward to games that I play with them. I guess it's a good break away for them from monotony -- although it is absolutely never monotonous in Mrs. Windell's classroom. She has an aura about her that children love. I hope to emulate that when I head on over to my intern next quarter or work in a school district.
Even though we are playing board games in the back of the classroom, they are LEARNING games that are very educational -- mostly reading and spelling -- and it also teaches social skills. I'm there to guide them and explain the rules to them.
Mrs. Windell chose a group of kids to work with me on a board game, which involves spelling. This is a group of kids that I have never worked with since I started to volunteer in TJ's classroom. One child, in particular, who I will call "Ariel", had been begging Mrs. Windell for th-e longest time to play with me. She finally got her wish, ran up to me, and gave me the biggest hug I ever received from a child in this class.
I didn't have my coffee this morning nor did I have any breakfast, so I felt pretty groggy as if I just got out of bed even though I'm professionally dressed to the nines. We were seated in the back of the classroom and all four children took their seats getting ready to play. One of the children in the group got a bit chatty and explained the rules without waiting for me. Thinking that the kids got it down pat, we started the game.
In the middle of the board there's a wheel with a plastic spinner in the middle of it. The children's job is to take turns spinning the spinner and doing what it says: "Draw 1, Draw 2, Draw 3, Camel, and Steal". (I will not go into details about how each one is played.) Ariel was first to spin and she worked on spelling on her word. It's the next child's turn to spin -- the spinner stopped at "STEAL". She reached out over to Ariel's pile and took a letter. She spelled her word.
In less than a minute, Ariel, who was sitting next to me, was quietly sobbing. I had no idea that the game affected her. AND DUMMY ME....FORGOT TO GO OVER THE GAME WITH THE GROUP! It's a supposed automatic thing with students. As a teacher my responsibility is to 1) explain 2)have children repeat back or do the activity with me and 3) verbally review and ask if there are any questions. I did not do steps 2 and 3. I felt sooooo bad for Ariel, and mentally kicked my butt for not doing it.
After apologizing to the group -- most especially to Ariel -- for not thoroughly explaining the rules I decided to improvise a little bit. Anytime the arrow points to "steal", the person who got stolen from gets to pick TWO more letters from the letter pile. Now everyone is hoping they get stolen from.
I'm glad that this was a minor mistake on my part. It was a good lesson learned. It also taught me to think quick on my feet when I make a mistake. I know that other places that I should not name, I'd get written up for something like that: if it seems that a childcaregiver is under a lot of stress, she gets written up. I remembered being frazzled when I went looking for a thermometer for a child who is running a fever. There wasn't one in my classroom but I found one in my purse. My write up was when I went searching for a thermometer, even though there were other childcareworkers there. These women had positions under me, so I told them to stay put with the children. But it was the STRESS, the part where I didn't ask the other workers to look for it (i.e. lacking in leadership) was what really got to them.
Being under stress got me in trouble.
In this newfound career at least....
...the reality is: ALL TEACHERS GO UNDER STRESS -- EVERYDAY. And as long as they're law abiding citizens and the children are meeting district and state standards, the teacher still gets an "A" for being a TEACHER.
It was okay that a seven year old child was crying. It felt good that she gave me another big hug after I apologized to her. The stress was especially relieved when Mrs. Windell looked at me, smiled, and said, "Teachers make mistakes all the time. We're not perfect."
TJ gave me a thumbsup and (secretly) blew me a kiss as I left the classroom.
test
No comments:
Post a Comment