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July 07, 2008
i have a great respect for teachers
i feel like my short stint as a teacher helps me empathize more w them and solidifies my belief that it is one of the most undeservedly underappreciated jobs there is. sometimes i feel like i'm bipolar b/c i want to simultaneously kiss and backhand my kids. some days, there's so on top of it, and they know all their shapes and some numbers and write when we tell them to write... and then some days, they are little nightmares. at this point, christy the other teacher and i can usually tell when they are pretending to not know something just to get a response from us (for the 100th time, THIS IS A SQUARE) and they get distracted and freak out at the tiniest things (ahhh, auntie auntie! *points to a gecko on the wall, the same gecko that shows up every week*). and it's bad positive reinforcement, but sometimes i can't help but laugh at their craziness -- once naji got so excited that she jumped and knocked over her chair and landed on her butt. it was so funny, but then every kid started jumping up and crashing to the ground. christy and i imitate their mannerisms or freak them out by making our tongues into tacos (christy can do a triple taco which they go CRAZY over), and the best is when they surprise us by suddenly spewing ou some knowledge. example, the other day, dugulu pointed to the "O" on his alphabet worksheet and called it an oval. we've learned tricks to keeping them occupied and paying attention -- sometimes it's like they have ADD, but other times it's just b/c they're bored w the same old worksheets or copying the same shapes. each of them chose animals, so sometimes we do activities and have them count the number of elephants or make a mask w a monkey face. being a good teacher takes ingenuity and determination and an endless supply of patience. they should get paid so much more.
Posted by Eunice Chyung at July 7, 2008 05:21 AM
