Is it the Weekend Yet?

Second day of teaching! I can’t believe it was only the second day… Gah. I definitely was not cut out to be a teacher. I think things will get a little easier once the mothers LEAVE ME CLASSROOM! There were more today! Crazy! Some were even sitting in front of their kids’ desks helping them during class. Not ok. The children need to pay more attention to me! My assistant and I had to move some desks after class today because some children really need to be closer to me up front. I have to say, my patience is being tested every single minute of the day. These kids don’t know very much, because English is their second language and don’t know a lot of vocabulary. They had no idea what a bell, a wagon, or a ladder was. I found that having the kids repeat a lot after me seems to help a little to get their attention.

In the afternoon I had my computer class. I feel like I might be a boring high school teacher, but there really isn’t too much you can do when all they have to do is on a program on the computer and record their scores. But the second period I had computers, 30 minutes in, the power went out! And all the progress the students did got lost. But they seemed to be okay with it because hey, no more typing for the rest of the day!  So, a senior girl decided that we should all introduce ourselves and get to know each other better, especially the teacher. They were all enthralled and amazed at my last name. Haha! They all tried pronouncing it and asked if they could call me Ms. Constantinescu. I said hey, if you can pronounce it, you can call me that! Well it was a pretty good class period. While they were typing, I got to color the math worksheets. That’s right. Color the math worksheets. There weren’t enough worksheets for math for all the kids and they stopped printing that workbook. So I have to photocopy all the pages and color the objects because if I don’t, the lesson makes absolutely no sense. It’s lots of fun! Just kidding. It’s really not. It’s actually a lot of work.

After computer class, I got to help Roy with the boys high school PE. It was fun bossing them around! And they were learning volleyball so I knew a thing or two that was happening. It was kind of fun actually playing with older kids for a change. I actually got to use a loud voice on them! I think they gained some respect for me which is nice, because being the only girl in a huge group of guys, they kind of assume you aren’t very good at sports. Kinda proved them wrong. ;)

I went to a soccer game today to watch and grade my kids’ papers. It was nice to be outside and get a break from being in classrooms all day. I found that the children who don’t say a word during school to me, tend to do better in their work than others. I have one student who has not uttered a single word this whole time! His mother said he speaks and understands English, he just doesn’t want to! Some kids just don’t stop talking. Quite the mix I have going. We had a group mid week worship together which was nice to just sing, relax, and hear some Bible passages. Now it’s almost bedtime for me. Sorry for such a long post! I definitely needed to rant a little bit. Everyone is stressed just ready for the weekend.

Thanks for the prayers! Love you all!!