A Great Day Teaching

Well I posted on my worst day, so I figured I should post about a really great day so I can remind myself why I'm doing this. 

The day felt chaotic. I arrived at school completely prepared for a great Wednesday. Another one of the teachers has been completely ill with a bad stomach virus and a cold. She arrived to teach today but was feeling very weak, so I offered to walk her home. The traffic on Zogo i Zi (crazy roundabout) was insane, and cars were honking at us for absolutely no reason. I think I let the chaos of the traffic get the best of me. 

The morning was fine. The usual calendar and greeting routine, a word of the day, and then we went over our schedule. Alphabet time was fantastic. We played smiley/frowny and had an extra smiley in the end (I was being quite strict with them.) Then we switched to body parts. and chaos. I was getting extremely frustrated for kids not understand what they needed to do. And then I was frustrated with them for not following directions. I needed a minute to think, so I told all the kids to stop and put their pencils down. Why wasn't this lesson working? by the time they all put their pencils down I had figured it out. The worksheet online had nice dark arrows draw to the body parts. the arrows on the worksheet in front of the kids were lightly colored, not to mention that I doubt many of them knew what the arrow was. So I had them draw body parts on the back of their paper. And they knew them. I sat them down at the carpet at the end of the lesson and apologized. "Boys and Girls, I'm sorry. Miss Tiara got frustrated, and I wasn't very nice to some students because I was frustrated. Everyone makes mistakes, even teachers. I should have looked closer at the worksheet before I handed it out and noticed how hard it was. You are smart students. You want to know how I know? Because when I had you draw me the pictures you knew ALL of your body parts. So it's not that you don't know, but the worksheet was very confusing. And that is my fault. Will you forgive me?"

After this we had break. Then I had 4th graders, and they did an awesome job comparing villages with a Venn Diagram. When I dropped my 1st graders off at ICT I noticed I had a major migraine, but it was such a good day I didn't even noticed until I stopped teaching. So I went and got coffee, because I have an addiction. Then we had lunch, which was the least chaotic lunch of them all. Math was incredible! The students were patiently waiting when they needed help, and they are finally starting to be able to do the addition worksheets on their own. They worked so hard that I told them we could skip the last 2 pages of our textbook for playdough time. However, about 5 students opted to continue their math work over having playdough time. WHAT?! I have the best students ever! Then I had a super wonderful prep period and got a lot done and prepared for tomorrow and Friday's lessons. I celebrated with a nice long walk to my favorite bakery and a chocolate eclair. Now I'm heading out to hang out with some great friends :)