The best days are sometimes also the worst...

5 Oct. 2011

I've had both one of the best, most rewarding days as well as one of the worst. I got to prepare more activities to do with my students, but I also had one of my worst teaching nightmares come true.

My day started well enough working with the 6th graders. Last week, I mentioned in this blog that I was planning to do Charades with the 6th graders. This turned out to be a great success with with them! They liked acting out the different vocabulary words, and they enjoyed seeing everyone's acting skills in action.

Then, I went to work with the 2nd grade class, and there was just one student who was out of control. He didn't want to participate and was hindering the other students' ability to learn. Between the other teacher and I, we were constantly trying to get this student to stop disrupting the other students, but with little luck. This sort of situation makes the day tough because it's hard to feel like you actually are making a difference by being here.

Since we are working with the longer schedule, I actually had the option to go home for lunch today--which I gladly took so that I would have a chance to recharge.

During the afternoon, I had a 3rd grade class as well as another 6th grade class. We had a blast and the students enjoyed the practice! The 3rd graders are learning prepositions (in, on, behind, under) and so I thought that we could review a little and then play Simon Says. They absolutely loved the game! Every time that I "tricked" the students, there was one boy that kept saying, "Eres muy buena!" In other words, he kept telling me that I was really tricky.

The 6th graders in my second class were even more into playing Charades. One girl asked me if she could act out one of the vocabulary words. She actually asked me in English if she could--which really impressed me. Generally, most of the students make requests in Spanish and you have to remind them that they are capable of doing it in English.

All in all, today was a very rewarding day. My students were able to not only enjoy themselves but also learn and grow.