Well it looks like I survived my first week of teaching (okay just three days). Not only that, though, I LOVED it. I know that I'm still in the honeymoon phase with my kids and that their eager to please teacher attitude won't last, but I really do think they are just a fantastic group of ten-year-olds. Really quite splendid. And even though I'm bone tired, I've just been loving every second of teaching.
Some highlights:
-One of my identical twins told me that he and his brother like to play tricks and change places, but I'll know when it's happening cause they can't stop giggling (I made a mental note here of things to include in sub plans).
-Quite possibly the tiniest girl in my class declared in her "Student Interest Sheet" that she is an avid hunter. Later when we wrote personal narratives about birthdays, she talked about how she wanted her mom to let her make a pinata out of a deer carcass and fill it with red candy. Yep. (Her mom didn't let her and she had to settle for a pony pinata with antlers attached that everyone shot with arrows before they beat it with a bat. Yep.)
-My parents sent me these lovely flowers as a surprise on my first day.
When the secretary brought them in, one girl said, "Oh, they're from me. I wanted to be teacher's pet."
-I taught my kids that when I say, "Give me five!" when they are standing in line, they are to assemble themselves into a perfectly straight, perfectly silent line. When I went to pick them up from recess yesterday, they watched for me at the door and then got into a five line without me asking, just as a surprise. Bless them.
-During the open house on the night before school started, a parent overheard one of my girls saying to another, "You'll like her. She's pretty." (Yes, I am vain like that).
-We've had some rather deep discussions on what our rights and responsibilities are in this country and then connecting those to what our rights and responsibilities are in our class. This is certainly a bright bunch of students.
-We had an impromptu discussion on acronyms. I let them guess what FBI stands for (several students yelled out, "Police!") and when I told them the B was a French word, they started guessing things like baguette and bonjour.
A lot more happened, but I don't want to bore you to death with things that I've found to be adorable. So pretty much just know... it was an awesome, awesome week. Three days.
When we came home last night, Lewis and I were both beyond exhaustion. Lewis fell asleep for an hour and then made macaroni and cheese for dinner (healthy, no?). At ten o'clock we were both pretty much just sitting there staring off in to space. But in the spirit of Friday night is date night, we tottered off to Macey's to get some Ben and Jerry's. Then we watched an episode of a TV show on Netflix, read a chapter of Harry Potter, and were dead in bed by 11:30, lamenting the fact that we stayed up so late. Yep, we're the vision of youth and vitality. Mid-twenties, you know.
A bona-fide Epson computer projector. Quality, people. Quality.