First Day at the high school

Well yesterday was the first day working at the high school and I'm still on the fence about how confident I feel about it. I went into the day feeling pretty strong and prepared to talk to these kids. Then when they all had gotten to the class I got a chance to look at their faces and I wasn't sure how to interpret what I saw. Many students looked disinterested, others looked curious. Some looked downright bored too. It was kind of a scramble at first picking people to work with. I think the idea was that the groups the students had formed the day before would pick what people they wanted to work with from the university. The kids really didn't jump to pick who they wanted because they had no idea who we were. So we had to mill around and figure out who needed us. As my group got started we were informed that two of the four students were absent that day and that the two students who were there had to brainstorm and formulate an idea for the entire group. There were a girl and a boy in the group and two other girls that would be there for our next meeting. They both looked tired and bored, the boy more than the girl. I think she realized that we were having to do this for our education so she went along with it even though she knew what she was doing. She had some art knowledge already. The boy didn't speak much at all, and at some point the girl threw her pen at him because he had fallen asleep. I tried to pull him into the conversation several times, asking him what he was interested in, what he did for entertainment, stuff that might get him to have a opinion on something. He really just didn't care, that was kind of upsetting, but we muddled through. After some coaxing the girl had some great ideas and with the help of use three university students they came up with a pretty good idea. The only problem with that however is that the two absent students needed to have a say, and jobs needed to be assigned to complete the assignment. So the idea is that the two missing girls would be back today (Wednesday) and that on Thursday (suprise, we are going Thursday too) they would be prepared and have a better more concrete idea about what they were going to do. Also my group was told to have one of us sit on either side of the boy to make sure he is alert and also to keep him from ditching class (which he has been known to do). Whew, we will see what happens on Thursday, I feel like I might need to have some more authority over the boy in the group. The first day was kind of spent getting our feet wet, and now I will try to enforce some more authority to get him to participate equally.

Chapter 2 of Fires in the Bathroom was pretty much summarizing everything I have been thinking about prior to beginning my education classes. I had been thinking a lot about respect and how important it is to have in a classroom, especially ones with students who are nearly adults. They want to be treated fairly, and that they have a chance to do something significant in the class. This includes knowing the material I am teaching them. I have to be able to remember details and be able to troubleshoot if things don't go as planned. I also have to remember that each student is a complex being and I shouldn't make judgments about them until I have gotten to know them personally. A major point for me is the not showing favoritism. I used to teach Sunday school art classes to preschoolers, and it was really hard for me to not show my preference to one little girl in specific. She was just like me when I was little, and she always needed hugs from me throughout the day. In fact many of the kids, girls and boys wanted hugs, but she was always the first to dive for me. I felt really bad one day because I had made a project for the kids and I saved one task for her because I knew she would like doing that. I really hope the other kids in the class didn't realize I had done that. But even at the age of 4-5 I'm sure they could understand the concept of favoritism. I still feel really awful about it to this day and I regret ever making any of my students feel less important. Ugh, that feels good to get off my chest though. At any rate the ideas and quotes from students in chapter two were all things I had thought about before and I'm glad that my opinions about how a teacher should interact with students were similar to those in the text. Chapter two of From Ordinary to Extraordinary was interesting, it was nice to see some actual examples of classroom activities. I tried to think of ways I could incorporate some of those projects into one that would be best suited to my teaching and what I hoped to teach my students. So anyway, I guess I'm a little nervous for Thursday, but I have to try to pique the interest of these kids so they don't think we are entirely lame. :-P