Teaching

Today was my first day teaching enrichment (visual arts). It was actually a lot of fun. I'm starting to really enjoy this job. I knew it was going to be different from OASES, especially with the demographics (OASES is pretty much all Asian while EPIC is Latino and African American). But the children are just so adorable. Especially my first graders. I really enjoy working with them. For a while I was a little discouraged that I was the only one working in pairs to lead the smallest group in the program. But today my supervisor moved my partner to the 3rd grade group, the largest one, to help out over there, leaving me by myself with the first graders. This may not seem like much, but it meant a great deal to me. I'm the only newbie in the team and the fact that my boss chose to leave me with a team to myself rather than my partner, a veteran, shows to me the trust she has in me to be able to handle the group on my own. It really boosts my own confidence in myself.

Anyways, back to teaching. I'm really enjoying the facilitating of activities and lessons. A big applause to my boss for gathering all the information and compiling lesson plans and activities. It really makes teaching these so much easier when the lesson is already set out for you. And the kids really listen. Sometimes they may look like they aren't paying attention, but you'll see when you see the work they do, that they really are listening.

Yesterday, I had journal time with my first graders. Since they haven't learned how to write words yet, we did the journal activity with pictures instead. This month is about teambuilding so the topic for the day was trust. I talked with my first graders about what it means to trust and who some of the people we trust are (friends, family, teachers, etc). The journal prompt was: Who do you trust the most? Most of the kids drew their best friends. But one kid drew me. I was so touched. How weird is it when you have your kids present their work and you ask them, "Who do you trust the most?" and they reply "Ms. Pam." And I've only known them for less than a week!

That, my friend, is the beauty of childhood. The innocence. The care-free love. They don't have to know you for long, they will still love you anyways. And no matter how bad the day went between you and them, every day is always a new day and all bad things will be forgotten. Oh how I wish I could be like that.

And this is why I love working with children. They help me refresh my mind. During training, we talked about how we have to put our personal lives aside when we are with the children and give our 200%. I don't even have to worry about focusing on the kids because right when I walk into the program office, all I'm thinking about is the kids. I'll admit that I have a lot of worries going on in my head, but they have never been able to run through my head while I am at program. Which is strange because I wasn't able to avoid that while tutoring at OASES. Wonder why that is. Could it be the kids?

For a while I have been a little wary about my decision to become a teacher. My parents aren't particularly supportive of it. They don't think it's the right path for me to take (my mom keeps telling me to rethink my decision and go into project management instead) and so I keep trying to convince myself otherwise. Now that I am finally finding myself in a somewhat teaching position, I have realized that this is what I want to do. This is something I enjoy. And even if the pay is not much, it is something that makes me happy. Seeing the smiles on these children's face is what makes everything all worth it.

But there is definitely still room for me to grow. I have discovered that I am constantly telling my kids that they "NEED to do this..." I need to find a better word to use than need. It sounds too demanding and just doesn't sound very good. Must figure out something. Hmm...