Back in the Saddle again

Hey, guess what? I forgot how much I like teaching KIDS! Call me crazy, but the one thing that consulting did not give me was the chance to get to know an enthusiastic bunch of children--with all their wonder, their exuberance, their crazy logic and ability to PLAY and have fun with things as long as they're presented in a positive light...here's an example:

Friday afternoon I agreed to help out another grade 5 teacher from across the hall, since he had a daycare emergency and he had to leave early...so his 20 students and my 23 spent the last half hour as a massive group. I scrambled, but pulled together two of the cooperative games that I learned from Tribes and Cognitive Coaching training (thanks, Penny!) to keep them from crashing the roof in with noise and chaos. One was called Earth, Wind, Water and Fire and it required they stand in a large circle with one ball...this could have been dangerous but I made the rule that we were trying to brainstorm as many animals as we could and as fast as we could. One child started, as as he threw the ball to someone from the other class on the other side of the circle, he called out one of the four categories, "Air!". The catcher had to respond when she caught the ball with the name of a flying animal, "Canary!", then she called out a category as she tossed the ball...this kept them busy for half the time, though it stalled when they started to look for their friends or curry favour by tossing the ball to the most popular...I think if I were to do it again, the ball would have had to go around the circle and I'd time it.

I certainly patted myself on the back to be able to keep 43 kids occupied on a friday afternoon, even if it was only for a half an hour. The second game we played was a word game, and it really kept them guessing. It was called "Bobby's world" and I started by saying, "I am going to bobby's world, and I'm going to take wood, but not an axe"....the child next to me stared the sentence the same way but chose two different paired items. I said they could come or not, depending on whether their items selected matched the spelling criteria I had established (double letter words versus none). By about student 20 they had the trick and we continued around the circle and I had to kick them out when the bell rang, "Can we play another game, Miss?"

Last week was hard, but really fun. The staff are great, the kids are nice, the school administration is supportive, positive and eager to see me succeed and I'm thinking this was a great decision to come here. Oh, and to top it off, my principal wants to send me to an international school conference...it just happens to be in Milan in April...Sweeet!