true confessions of a first grade teacher

okay, so today concluded my second day teaching here. the first day went well. nothing terribly out of the ordinary or exceptional happened. the kids are absolutely adorable and a handful. i have 11, the largest class in the school. they are from korea, singapore, thailand, taiwan, america, and china, and a mixture of those. 9 girls, 2 boys. they're already writing "i love miss shayna" on their papers. i never got that from my high schoolers :)

it is proving to be more difficult than i had imagined in a few areas. the fact that this is their second, sometimes third language is a challenge. i mean, they're smart, don't get me wrong. when we had mandarin class yesterday, vicky walked up an started speaking chinese to them, and they immediately all responded in chinese. it totally caught me off guard and i had to stop and process the fact that these kids are smart. they will rise to whatever standard i put before them this year. that's encouraging and scary at the same time.

today, all was going well until i ventured into the art room to have "music class" with one 4 year old, 8 five year olds, and 10 6 year olds. uh uh. my master plan was for them to make a percussion instrument, a "shaker", made my decorating  2 small paper plates, putting some seeds in them, and stapling them together. let's just say, the seeds were everywhere, the shakers were louder than a drum set, i was exhausted after 25 minutes. i need a different plan for thursday, but needless to say, after one day, i am not excited about music class :( i teacher the third though 8th grade music once a week on friday, and i plan on that being a chorus type deal, so we'll see how that works.

alright, it's 8:45 pm here and i need to start getting ready for bed, so i can be snoozing by 10. my body is getting back into teacher mode. it's very different than house cleaner mode. i miss my family. at the same time i am thankful to be here.