The "First" Day of School #2
Trip Start
Jun 19, 2008
1
13
37
Trip End
Ongoing
Taichung, Taiwan
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Team teaching today went quite well. I team-taught my second graders with another second grade teacher, Katie, who is from Mauston, Wisconsin. Katie is a first year teacher who went to school in Minnesota. Although I think she had similar mixed feelings when it came to the sudden shift to team teaching, we get along well and organized our class so she taught the first half (while I helped out the struggling students), and I taught the second half while she corrected papers and helped out students as well. My "Ducks" classroom blended in very well with her "Parrots", and things went off with relatively few problems other than the occasional identity crisis from my students asking what animal they were supposed to be.
After class and our lunch break, we were both called into the administrator's office again. We were told that they had a new idea for us for the month of July. The plan would consist of me teaching a 3rd grade class (the Pandas), Katie teaching the 2nd graders, and the previous 3rd grade teacher working on administrative errands for his remaining month in Taiwan. They said that they wanted to hear my thoughts on the matter, but to keep in mind that there was relatively no other option around this.
I must admit that I was quite disappointed in the decision. However, like the administrator had stated, there was really no other option for me. This was an instance where I reminded myself about the necessity to be flexible as an educator and began organizing my things to begin teaching third grade the next morning.
I came to school the next morning and was just emotionally drained from all of the events of the past few weeks. I really did not want to get out of bed, and no matter how much coffee I drank, I just couldn't find the energy to get excited about teaching a third grade class for my, essentially, third straight "first day of school."
However, one of the teachers in our office came up to me just before I left to begin teaching the third graders and asked, "Do you have Eagle in your second grade class?"
I said, "Yeah, I will start teaching him again in August."
"Well," she stated, "I taught him last year and I asked him how he liked you. He said, 'Teacher Scot is soooooo cool!'"
On my walk to class, I walked past Andy and Chris, two of my second graders, who yelled, "Teacher Scot!" and raced down the hallway to give me a high five.
I must admit that it made me feel good that I must have made a pretty big impact on those kids in my two days with them. It made me feel a little bit better about walking into my first day of teaching third grade.
I began my first day of teaching third grade by explaining the definition of a "contract."
:)
