My Life as a Teacher
Yesterday and today were those days were examples of why I'm loving this profession. A few weeks ago, I read a "Chicken Soup for the Soul" book, and read about how Shamu, the killer whale, was trained to jump so high. The trainers "overcelebrated" its tiniest successes, and ignored any negative behaviour.
So, that's been my new take on teaching - overcelebrating successes and ignoring behaviour I don't want to see. It's hard, but I think my kids have noticed that I'm having a lot more fun with them, which leads them to want to try harder to please me and to be proud of themselves as well.
For the last two days, my TA has been absent, which surprisingly, helped motivate (or pressure!) me to do more things. I'm more organized, more prepared, and have been spending more time bonding with my kids. My TA usually takes the kids to their classes, especially between Spanish and Music as I have a meeting during that time. Today, I watched the clock carefully. They were supposed to transition at 12:20pm. I forgot the time until 12:25pm, and rushed to my class, thinking everything and everyone would be in complete and utter chaos.
Nope. No one in the classroom. So I head downstairs. There they all were - they had marched themselves down to the music room and lined themselves up outside the door. WOW! What an awesome bunch of kids!!!
Another thing that validated my love for teaching happened during the lunch hour. I decided to go sit outside so that I could spend some "out of class" time with my kids. At the end of the lunch hour, they had to go inside for Spanish class... and a few of them said, "No, we don't want to... we like the English classes better!!!"
I'm glad to know that I'm sort of doing something right and not wreaking complete havoc on these children's lives :).
Plus it was probably about +30C outside - in February!
So, that's been my new take on teaching - overcelebrating successes and ignoring behaviour I don't want to see. It's hard, but I think my kids have noticed that I'm having a lot more fun with them, which leads them to want to try harder to please me and to be proud of themselves as well.
For the last two days, my TA has been absent, which surprisingly, helped motivate (or pressure!) me to do more things. I'm more organized, more prepared, and have been spending more time bonding with my kids. My TA usually takes the kids to their classes, especially between Spanish and Music as I have a meeting during that time. Today, I watched the clock carefully. They were supposed to transition at 12:20pm. I forgot the time until 12:25pm, and rushed to my class, thinking everything and everyone would be in complete and utter chaos.
Nope. No one in the classroom. So I head downstairs. There they all were - they had marched themselves down to the music room and lined themselves up outside the door. WOW! What an awesome bunch of kids!!!
Another thing that validated my love for teaching happened during the lunch hour. I decided to go sit outside so that I could spend some "out of class" time with my kids. At the end of the lunch hour, they had to go inside for Spanish class... and a few of them said, "No, we don't want to... we like the English classes better!!!"
I'm glad to know that I'm sort of doing something right and not wreaking complete havoc on these children's lives :).
Plus it was probably about +30C outside - in February!
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