Today was: Pretty Good

That's a "Pretty Good" with a postitive spin, rather than a moody "PRETTY good..."

Busy. Very busy tonight. I'm having a solo day tomorrow, my first in front of Miles, so I'm preparing an outline for the day, and preparing myself mentally for Miles' harsh criticism. Really, I'm more nervous about tomorrow than I was the last two times that we've had a sub and I've taken the class. This time is different because I'M BEING WATCHED, and CRITIQUED ALL DAY. I just need to follow my own advice and pretend like the grownups in the room aren't there. And, anyway, it's not like I'm totally going to bomb... right?

At some point in the day, my BEATIFULLY PLANNED [to the MILI-SECOND!] day will be interrupted by the students being carted off to do a Vision Screening. Apparently, because the kids are kindergarteners, they won't be asked to name letters on a chart [although, I'm SURE that all of our kids have PERFECT letter recognition...] - rather, students will have to play the "E Game", in which "E"s of various sizes, and in various positions, will be projected onto a screen. The kids will have to point their fingers in the direction that the "legs of the E" are facing. A flyer was placed in Miles' mailbox at school TODAY reading "Children should be taught to point their fingers in the same direction as the legs of a letter E. The E Game is training for the vision screening. Students should be allowed to play this game for 5 to 10 minutes each day for a WEEK before the screening." Again, this flyer was placed in Miles' mailbox TODAY. One of my SFSU professors was right, teachers and students in this country are constantly being set up to fail.

How clever am I? During recess today, some of the girls in the class were upset that the girl in the wheelchair didn't bring her long jumprope to school. What did I suggest we do? Jumprope with an imaginary jumprope. The girls LOVED it, and really treated it like there was a actual jumprope that another girl and I were turning. One girl even did that thing where you stand outside as the jumprope is turning, watching it to get the timing, and then run in and start jumping. Crazy.

Oh, I led Math time today and it went pretty well. Sure, the rather heavy Weather Chart fell off the wall and on a couple of students' heads because I pointed at it too firmly, and the girl that I had do the Calendar stuff with is the odd girl in class who seems kind of haunted and refuses to speak very much, but... Oh, and when it was time to clean up their Math Centers I said, "Clean up your centers and then put your heads down on the table and I'll call the quietest table to go line up for recess." I decided that I would help the Block Center because they had the biggest mess. There I was, picking up and putting away handfuls of blocks, oblivious to anything else in the room. A NUMBER of minutes later, I panicked and remembered, "HOLY CRAP! THE OTHER KIDS!" Sure enough, there were ALL of the other tables with their heads down, being quiet, who knows for HOW long. When I laughed about it later with Miles he said, "Yep, I saw that all of the other tables were patiently waiting, and I just let you handle it." Oops, I guess that I just totally forgot for a second [ok, a few MINUTES] that I was the teacher...

I've got to continue going over my plan, and then answer some midterm questions ["What are you most proud of accomplishing during this first seven weeks?", etc.] for my seminar tomorrow night.

Something to look forward to tomorrow: Tiggy Tiger's song.