I'm trying to get a jump on one of the two lesson plans that are due on Thursday at 5am so I'm going to be short today. I will say that my second day teaching went way better than yesterday! My students seemed to all grasp the shapes. I spent a large percentage of class reviewing the basics so we could cover more complicated things - but they got it, so that's all that matters to me. I have to work on budgeting my time better. I was racing at the end to get the assessment in - and I didn't finish so they had to do two worksheets for homework - and my MIA co-teacher (another corps member) acted like a general in the military and overhauled the end of my lesson by giving out consequences to any student that so much as opened their mouth. I'll put this out here. I figured the kids would be rowdy after lunch - so I put on 10 seconds of music and told them to "air guitar their energy out". It worked. They were so well behaved for the first 30 minutes. As soon as I started to rush, they felt my tenseness and started to act up a bit knowing it was almost time to go home. Well.. the other teacher-in-training went ape-shit and started screaming at them. She is supposed to only be observing during my lesson - I do her that courtesy. Nope, she gave out at least 11 warnings in 5 minutes. I gave out 9 in 30 minutes. I am sure the kids are terrified of her. She made them march like they were in the military and apparently, the 5th graders on the other side of the school heard her screaming at them at the end of the day. Needless to say, we are going to have a discussion about norms tomorrow. Not with the students, with my co-teacher.
I wanted to get to know my students a bit more today - so we had a few H2H's. Here is what I found out (pseudonyms of course.)
-Billy was absent from school yesterday, not because he was sick.. but because his mom didn't have any gas in her car to drive him to school. She didn't have any money to buy gas because she needed to feed her kids.
-Johnny told me that he knows he is bad at school, but his grandmother wants him to get a good education so she reminds him every day that he needs to stay in school so he doesn't get shot in a gang. Reminder, I'm teaching second graders. They know about guns and gangs. (I teared up after I was telling one of my team teachers but kept it together when talking to him.) His behavioral disorder makes it difficult for him to sit still so I'm trying a few new things out this week to help him learn better. Hopefully we'll see some improvement in his behavior and his academic assessments. He's bright. He just needs some love. I didn't let him hug me today because of his behavior - but I think he really needs the extra TLC.
Spencer told me that when he asked one of his students why he liked coming to school, the boy's response was "So I can eat breakfast and lunch." My advisor said that sometimes when she knows the parents in her class are struggling to feed their children, she runs down to the cafeteria after lunch and collects food to send home with the kids so they can eat something.
Poverty is making me sick to my stomach. I just hope I'm not failing these kids .
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