Last Week was: Short, and OK

Short week, last week, what with Thanksgiving [Thursday and Friday off] and all.

I had another Solo Day on Monday. Miles was there for it, so maybe that's why things went more smoothly than Thursday. That guy just can't keep his paws off the room. There were a couple of times where he yelled at kids and then got this look on his face like he knew that he should've let me handle it. I talked to a friend who teaches in Marin this weekend about my Solo WEEK coming up [December 1-5], she stressed that Miles should not be in the room AT ALL during that week [NEXT week!]. So I went into school this morning and told him this and he said, "Yeah, I talked to some of the other teachers and they said the same thing..." Whew. That didn't, however, keep him from getting involved on Monday...

At the end of the day [Monday], I walked past a table and saw Miles' clipboard sitting there [he was taking notes ALL DAY - it made me nervous ALL DAY] with the word "disaster" written in the "-" column. Ugh. We sat down, and, for the most part, it was positive comments. He liked that I attempted to do a lesson [making "at" family words - i.e. cat, bat, hat, etc.] where everyone got their own little chalkboards to practice writing the words on. Sure, it took FOREVER to pass the boards out, and half the kids got a piece of chalk that, for some reason, wouldn't write very well on their chalkboard. But, all in all, it went off without too much trouble. And, Miles thought it helpful to find out that the kids could do it without spending TOO much time on it, or without it getting to crazy and out of hand.

Teaching is difficult - REALLY difficult. One of the things that I'm having trouble with is balancing getting the curriculum across while trying to handle classroom management. There are times where I don't see kids goofing off [Miles lets me know...] because I am SO focused on saying exactly what I want to say so that the point of the lesson gets across. I want to make sense while I'm teaching, and make it so that the kids actually learn something, and sometimes that means that I'm not paying attention to what each and every kid is doing.

After school on Wednesday, I hung around and tried to get some planning in for the big Solo Week. With each word I wrote in my Teacher's Planning Book, I got more and more confident. By the time I left for home that afternoon, I was feeling like I could handle ANYTHING. Now, as the week quickly approaches, the confidence is waning a bit. However, I keep reminding myself to remind myself to Just Have Fun. It occasionally works.

I barely wrote anything this week - I apologize. It just gets harder and harder to make time to write as the semester is coming to a close. Even now, I must go and spend some time with Teachers' Editions and a planning book. I just want next week to be fun and have as much of me in it as possible.