Gooood Morning 8th Graders!

Because of some technological difficulties I was unable to post yesterday's blog, so I'm gonna post yesterday's first and then post another for today!

Tuesday, June 14th
Today was a whirlwind day to say the very least! It was chaotic, crazy, and just plain ridiculous at times, but I loved every minute of it. I enjoyed meeting all of my students and look forward to the next 9 days with them.

Like I told you guys yesterday, I taught today's afternoon class on my own (with only a little help from my sweet mentor!). I think my lessons went well today. We had the kids take a personality test, which we introduced as a "test to see where they are". They all assumed it was going to be a reading test so their groans and moans were heard throughout the school. They were all pretty amused when they found out it was a Pig Personality Test. Basically, the test theorizes that you can tell what kind of student one is by where they draw their pig on the page and what details you give your pig. Of course, this is not very accurate. We just wanted to use this as an icebreaker to get to know our students a little better. After our "test", we had a vocab. lesson. We also read "Pandora's Box" and worked on activities that went with it. Overall, I'd say that today was a really good day. I was excited to get to take most of the control with the second period class, and I feel like I did a decent job (considering it was my VERY first time to teach a class of kids). At the end of the day, my mentor teacher offered me some constructive criticism/praise she'd jotted down while observing me teaching. Here's what she said:

Need to work on:
-Being LOUD. I was nervous and tended to use a quieter tone.
-Varying my tone. Again, because I got nervous I lacked a variety in the tone of my voice. She advised me to work on using different tones in order to hold the students' attention.

Praise:
-She liked the way I taught the vocab. lesson. She said I did a very good job of getting the kids involved.
-She was SUPER impressed (and completely shocked) when I got on to the class for not listening to directions as I was giving them out. I raised my voice and informed them that if they weren't willing to listen to the directions when I gave them then I wasn't going to be willing to answer their questions later. (Ha! Take that 8th graders! hehe)

If I've learned one thing today, it is that there is NEVER a dull moment with jr high students. Here are some of the off the wall things students said/did today:

-Little Precious came in with her momma and was very upset to find that tote bags/backpacks of any kind were not allowed. I informed her that she either needed to leave the bag with me to put in the AP's office or give it to her mom to take home. This was not what Little Precious wanted to hear and she began to tear up. Yes, she got tears in her eyes...over a bag. Now, I love my bags, but this was just foolish. She eventually decided to leave her precious VS PINK bag with her mother to take home....after a 10 minute conversation/crying episode...over a bag.

-We asked the class what the word "optimistic" means and a student eagerly raised his hand to give us the answer. Pleased to have such excitement about answering the question, we prompted him to give us the definition. He proceeded to tell us that it meant "special, like mentally retarded". Confused we asked him to clarify. Once again, he told us it meant "retarded". We realized he'd gotten "optimistic" confused with "autistic".

-During bus duty, I ran into another Little Precious, though she was NOT a bus rider. Instead, she was to walk home. Little Precious needed clarification on which way to walk. Now, I'm no genius, but I'd say walk TOWARDS YOUR HOUSE!

Keep reading for more wackadoodle kiddo stories and the low-down on my journey as a summer intern :)