Day One

Yay! I survived the first day! My first impression of the kids was great, I hope I gave them a good first impression too. 

One thing that I noticed instantly about this group is that they are so advanced compared to all the other groups of students I've taught! This will be new for me; I feel like all of our classes preached about how we would have classes that were full of low-achieving, poorly behaved hooligans that would need constant stimulation. By the end of my college career, I think I had fallen into a funk: even though I didn't realize it until today, I really was beginning to believe that my life as a teacher was going to be nothing but struggles and hardships, always trying to engage students that, frankly, didn't give a damn. I suppose that today restored some hope in me. Of course there will be classes that are more difficult than others, and no class is perfect...blah blah blah. But today I remembered why I decided to become a teacher in the first place: I LOVE WORKING WITH KIDS!! Just seeing how excited the students were to meet me and learn about my pets and family and likes and dislikes...seeing one student's eyes light up when she finally understood how to divide 12 into 3 equal groups...listening to a group of boys tell me all about their Star Wars Origami...all of those things make my day. 

I know that this semester is going to have struggles. There will be days that I'm going to want to pull my hair out. I'm already learning about the politics of the school I'm in, and sometimes it isn't pretty. But I just have to remember that even though those days happen, I joined this profession because it's what I love to do.

Who would have thought I would have learned something on my very first day? I'm pretty excited about that! 

We are doing testing tomorrow, Wednesday, and Thursday afternoon, so that will be an interesting experience. I could tell some of the kids were feeling a little anxious about it, but I'm sure they will do just fine. 

It's only 8:30, and I'm completely wiped out and ready for bed. So, I'm off for now--more updates later. Here's to a *hopefully* successful day two tomorrow :)