Teaching at LCI
5 Mar
Goodness gracious. What a first day. I woke up early today with “I love you, you’re awesome, don’t worry it will be fine,” calls from mom and dad. Best parents I could ever hope or ask for. So supportive.
Well, their well wishes set me slightly at ease, but I got to school knowing that I still felt utterly unprepared.
My first class was morningkinder, a spin on american kindergarten of sorts. It didn’t go so bad, I guess it depends on how you classify ‘bad.’ One boy cried all day. My director sat in class so that he would stop sobbing. Imagine my nervousness to begin with, then to have my director watching me teach my first lesson! I sang my made up “Good Morning” song with the kids. They might have liked it, but didn’t show it. They just sat there and stared. ‘Okay guys, I know I’m not voice-trained or anything,’ I was thinking, ‘Give me a chance!’ I won them over with the ABCs. They liked that. Otherwise the class was just bits and pieces of… I don’t know… a bunch of unrelated little lessons. It was weird. I have to organize better for next week.
One activity I did was to have them draw their self portrait. I did mine on the board. It sucked. It was pretty much a stick figure. Theirs were way better. They looked like anime robots with enormous eyes, and machine gun arms. One boy just drew a circle and scribbled on it. I told him it was nice. I wasn’t sure what to do/say. I had the kids guess who each of the pictures was supposed to be. They were totally accurate. One girl even drew the bubble beads in her hair in the picture. ‘These must be supergenius children,’ I thought. Either that or they watch too many cartoons.
My afternoon classes were okay. I suppose. I gave some homework assignments, randomly, knowing that maybe 2 or 3 kids would actually do it. The kids didn’t understand much that I said all day. That was frustrating. I think I need to sllooooowww down my lessons so they actually LEARN something. That’s probably the missing piece to my puzzle. If my day was a puzzle, its scattered all over the floor and some pieces are stuck under the couch.. never to be found again.
The first day at a new job is always difficult, or so I’m told. AHH. Better. It better get better. I’m off to bed, to try to sleep off this silly feeling that everything is out-of-control and I’m being thrown around in some intense wind.
Amy made us dinner last night. It was fantastic. We ate on the floor, with little shooters of sparkling Korean wine.
MRumianowski
Lis, don’t worry. Just take a big deep breath. It’ll come together! You’ll be fantastic!
LoL enormous eyes and machine gun arms.