Week One of Teaching: I Survived

...but my computer didn't.  Thursday morning, in the middle of my final lesson for the week - the screen starts turns black and all of these numbers and letters run across it.  I turn the computer off and it won't reboot windows.  After 2 1/2 hours on the phone with HP tech support, they tell me they're sending me a new hard drive.  Thankfully, I am not lead teaching again until next Thursday.  Hopefully I will have my computer back up and running by then.  I really think it sucks that my 1 month old computer would give up on me like that.  I thought we were a team - late night lesson planning, presenting powerpoint in class.  I basically took my laptop everywhere for the last week and apparently it didn't appreciate it. 

After the first day of teaching, the week got progressively worse.  The students became less and less interested in what we were teaching, my plans became less and less rehearsed as I was throwing them together at the last minute and I was becoming more and more tired with less sleep each night (starting with a maximum of 5 hours of sleep and reaching a minimum of 3 hours of sleep).    

 

Other highlights from the week include-    

• A student slept through most of my entire lesson on Wednesday
• I cried twice in front of others (not my students) - once over feeling hopeless about my ability to help a student who is really struggling and a second time during a session where the 8 people I work most closely with were all sharing their life stories.
• I lost my lunch bag (so now I bring my lunch in a plastic target bag)
• One of my students might have a crush on me, as he called me at 10:30pm Saturday night
• I made parent phone calls and got to tell 3 mothers how much I enjoyed having their child in my class
• Out of seven students, only four showed up one day
• One girl told us she's already getting sick of us and to stop treating her like a kindergartner

But perhaps the biggest highlight from my week:

One of my students is extremely shy.  I'll call him Griff (though this is not his real name).  Griff hasn't hit his growth spurt yet so he is smaller than all the other students in the class.  He is also a slower reader.  When he talks in class, it's mostly mumbling that is hard to understand what he's saying even when you're standing right next to him.  On the first day of class he wouldn't even look me in the eye.  Over the week we saw him come out of his shell a bit and start participating more in class, even smiling and having fun.  But when he gets the wrong answer on anything, he shuts down again and won't look at you or talk to you. 

On Friday, he was sitting in the cafeteria at a table by himself, so I went over and started talking to him.  He wouldn't look at me - just responded quietly facing the other direction.  I asked him why he was late for school.  He told me he missed the bus.  I told him I was glad he came, even if he was late.  I asked him about getting me his parent contact information.  At this point another student, Tor (another made up name) from our class came and sat down next to him.  I said to Griff, "I want you to give me your phone number so I can call your mom and dad and tell them how much I like having you in class - just like I got to call Tor's mom last night and tell her how much I like having him in class."

Griff looked at Tor like he couldn't believe I really called his mom and said that, but Tor nodded and told him that I did.  A little smile of shock showed up on Griff's face.  He still wouldn't look at me, but he nodded when I asked him to get me his mom's number.

When the kids came back from lunch, Griff shoved a crumpled up piece of paper in my hand as he passed through the doorway.  It looked like garbage.  I followed him into the classroom, saying "What's this?  Did you just give me your garbage?!"  Griff wouldn't look at me, he just kept walking.

I opened up the crumpled piece of paper and he had written down his telephone number for me.