Starting with some positives, seeing kids after a while off was great. They are so sweet, and the class I worked with over Leadership Week, when they came to writing class, was accusing me of being a traitor because I wasn't in reading class with them: not maliciously, of course, but kids don't know how to voice displeasure that you are not with them. I worked out with my mentor/their homeroom teacher that I could come in for advisory twice a week on my off periods. Depending on what comes up, I am definitely going to try and make it to them once a week, at least, just to be involved and participate.
The day itself was good.
Classes were really good. Kids were, of course, pushing things, but it is their nature. The classes I was working with were great, they wanted to do things. My end of the day class was a little bit of a hot mess, but only because it was the end of the day and we forgot the class was shortened so we didn't get to the crux of what we wanted to, but it was okay because the kids were silently reading and that was awesome, especially after the little bit of a tug of war to get them to do it.
The only terrible part was recess. It's two hours of awful. We spend 80 minutes of it just walking to and from the park, and the remaining 40 minutes standing around. It works out to each class walking to and back from the park for 20 minutes and having between 5-10 minutes outside to play. It seems completely ridiculous. One of the other TAs seemed just as boggled about it as I was, because it was just riling the kids up to bring them right back inside. I'm just not about recess.
After the day was over, I didn't really have much to do, so I packed up and left around 5, but I headed to the front office to drop off the walkie talkie I needed to get (Ugh - they're such a pain to carry around) and the head of the Humanities department was there, and he asked about my day, and I let him know that the day itself was good, but I was having some problems with other things, and I got to talk to him about the frustrations I was feeling.
I think the following quote really sums up some of the things I was feeling about my lack of responsibilities and seemingly productive work:
"Action springs not from thought, but from a readiness for responsibility." - Dietrich Bonhoeffer
I'm ready to be responsible for something, at the very least, and thus, I'm itching for something productive to do, but don't have it. He asked me to send him an email summing up our convo and he would work on it. It feels good to have someone else on it too, considering all of my attempts thus far have fallen flat.
But now (I just realized I forgot to put make-up on this morning. Yikes...) it's weekly goal time. I think my goal this week is to survive, haha. By that, I mean be flexible, do what I'm asked, and make my presence helpful to both the students and the teachers. I don't really have expectations beyond that, except that I'm getting observed tomorrow, and that's it's own dilemma. I've resigned myself to that one, however, and I know I am not going to score well. I am hoping for twos, to be honest. That's at least "developing."
Now, onto Day 2. Wish me luck!
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