Mood: a little accomplished
"Miss Vicky Miss Vicky!!"
When i entered room 8, the kid closest to the door exclaimed my name in unexpected delight. Six to seven kids streamlined their way toward me a second after and the lower region of my body was soon engulfed by sticky little hands. They were so happy to see me! My mentor teacher gave me the "haha" face and told the kids to get back on task...
Which....for the day was to work on a math pretest. I was set up with three kids and we got right to work. It wasn't long before i discovered how little they wanted to learn. They were goofing off and not absorbing anything i was saying. I struggled with them a little more until we reached a point where i asked on of the kids to read me a word problem. He responded, "i can't I'm not good with words." And then he gave me the most heartbreaking apologetic look. "well why don't i read it with you?" He brightened up and we took on the task of reading the problem. Let me just say, it was not the easiest thing for him to do.
Meanwhile thoughts of shock and disbelief were running through my head. They are in the third grade. It wasn't that they couldn't do the math problems in front of them, it was that they couldn't even read the problem to begin with. Needless to say, when my hour was up, i had never felt more defeated in my life. I felt worse than i did when i bombed my midterm this week. (that's yet another story to tell).
At the end of the day, I sat at my special U shaped desk pondering the backgrounds of these kids when one i helped that day unexpectedly threw me. "Thank you for helping me miss Vicky!" said the most difficult child that day. She had relentlessly goofed off and only grudgingly did what i asked her to do the entire hour. And yet here she was thanking me for the help that i didn't give enough of. It amazes me yet again that just one kid could make me feel like NOT a complete failure and that i am fully capable of changing their lives for the better. I think i just had my first teaching epiphany and it sure felt good.
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1 comment:
I am glad to hear that teaching is already teaching you so much! I am definitely encouraged by the kids as well; I admire (and sadly amazed) with their innocence and honesty.
You are most definitely NOT a failure. Also, you're not the only one who's going to be teaching them; they'll have many teachers for the rest of their lives! So, even if you mess up or lose your patience or somehow miscommunicate a 3rd grade level math problem, someone else later down the line will correct it (it's 3rd grade math. I'm pretty sure someone will catch their mistake!).
Jia you Vicks! I think you're doing an awesome job. (: Keep it up!
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