What a day, what a day, what a day...
Today felt really long. Like, REALLY long. We had a fire drill this morning, which threw us off a little because it happened right when we were walking to P.E., and so we had to go outside in the crazy wind. The kids were all squealing about how cold they were and we missed about 10 minutes of P.E. because of it! A highlight of the morning was that I got to drive over to the Pre-K center in town and observe another student teacher do an art lesson with her kids. They were adorable, and they really liked it! I am glad that we get to go into one another's classrooms and see what goes on.
After lunch, Aryn left for a 1/2 personal day, so it was Jennie and I in the classroom. I did the other half of my pre-assessment (a journal entry about what they would do if they were pirates) and it went fantastic! Their entries were adorable. I am excited to see how they do on the rest of their entries. Math went well too, both morning and afternoon. Things were going great...
And then. It happened. Yesterday Aryn had a class meeting with all of the children to talk about the way they treat our library books. The rule now is that any child who sits, stands, throws, or otherwise mistreats a book will need to move his/her name on the discipline chart. And today, it happened. One girl (who hardky ever gets into trouble) was pushing a book around on the carpet, which Aryn used as a specific example of what NOT to do with the books. So I talked with her about it, and I asked her what we needed to do next. She said, "move my name?" And I said yes...that's the rule for the class now, so that's the rule for her, too.
Disaster. Crying. Hyperventilating. Crying. Begging. Crying.
It went on for about 30 minutes. I was trying to decide between teaching the class and helping her get control, and Jennie was trying to both things at once...and it was rough. Really rough. I wanted to cry, too. I could not stop thinking about it on my way home from school today. I felt like such a terrible person. I hate it when they cry, I really do. I didn't want to make her cry.
That's the hardest part of teaching. Knowing how to teach and assess and all of that is one thing...but you also want to make them feel good about themselves. Help them. Keep their spirits up. I do not think that I did that today. I tried to calm her down, and talk to her about how we all make mistakes and the important thing is that we learn from them...but Jennie still had to bust out the paper bag to stop the hyperventilating. So that was kind of an unsuccessful discussion.
Oh, well. Tomorrow is a new day.
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