I love it all

Teaching is for me. There is something thrilling about helping students discover something new and finding ways to make them love it as much as you do. I've always been obsessed with learning and school. I used to get insulted if my Mom asked me if I'd done my homework. Of course I had! What earthly reason would there be for me not to do it?! On a bright sunny day in August, 2004 I sat in my dorm room practically bouncing with glee doing my very first piece of work for college; reading the opening chapters of Plato's Republic and preparing for the seminar. My color coding was a work of art. My roommate was convinced that I was more than a little insane. Scratch that, my whole dorm thought I was absolutely ridiculous.

Thursday and Friday I teach 5th grade and it's definitely my favorite. Fourth graders are a little harder to manage and sixth graders are a bit too jaded to really care about paying attention. They can be fun but it's a lot harder to have a lesson I can walk away with feeling satisfied. I always finish Thursday and Friday smiling and happy to be alive. It sounds over the top but what more in life could I ask for? I have a great job, a great apartment, I'm independent and I love my kids.

Right now, my students are greatly amused that I'm attempting to learn all of their names. Most of the teachers do not know all of the students names. Each class I teach has between 32 and 35 students. I have 11 different classes. The names are completely alien to me. I'm trying anyways. My co-teacher agreed to do an activity with me where we make name cards to put on the kid's tables so that we can learn their names better. Not to mention the fact that most of the students have no idea how to write their name using English characters. We'll see how it goes. I know about 5 students names so far. It's a start.

I just had 2 of my 4th graders visit my office to chat with me for 20 minutes before they have piano class. It sounds silly but sometimes it's nice to just talk about their life. One girl is working on a novel and the other is writing a comic book instead of running around during recess. I found that using an online translator gives us a lot more to talk about because if they get stuck on a word they want they can just quickly type it in and then continue on and tell me all about it.