Today was my first day at school! I will be with grade one, aka, first grade. Like any Filipino I've met, the teacher I will be working with was extremely friendly and grateful to have help.
I got there, and after being introduced, I observed her teaching for a while. She had told me that I will be teaching English and Math, and I guess we're just supposed to integrate Science into all subjects. We also started class with prayer, a song, and learning a Bible verse. I actually can't remember if she said I would be teaching that part, but I think I will.
As usual, I am horrible with names and can't remember her name. I asked her what it was at some point and nodded my head like I understand, which is usually what I do when I can't understand accents and then ask someone else later. Is that bad? :)
Anyway, she said I could just observe this week, because next week is a school holiday on Monday and Tuesday, Wednesday is review, and Thursday and Friday are examinations. So I (somewhat selfishly) thought, "Great! Two more weeks to just observe stress-free!" Next thing I knew, though, she had written the kids' spelling words on the board and as they were copying them down, she came over to me and asked me if I would explain the words to the kids.
Sure, no problem. So while the kids write down the words, which takes a while, I imagine how I will describe each of them. One word really got me: flap. How in the WORLD do you define FLAP?? Keep in mind I haven't looked up the definition to give myself any ideas, so instead of thinking of a definition, I look around the room for an example, which is what I actually ended up doing for a lot of the words. The thing that seemed to pop out in my mind was the fly thing covering the zipper on my capris. Okay, that's probably not appropriate. Finally, I ended up just using a girl's backpack that had a "flap" that laid over to close it. Probably not the greatest example, but hey, it's my first day.
Other words included flag, flip, flat, clap, clip (also had a little trouble with that one), my, fly, by, and one more I'm not thinking of right now. I guess I did okay, because the teacher seemed pleased enough. However, as she went back through them and covered up parts of the word to actually have the kids sound it out to help with their reading ability, her accent made flip sound like fleep and flat sound like fl-ah-t. Then, she asked me how I would explain the sound of the "y" in the words. Uhhhh.
So that was spelling. Then for grammar, the kids learned the difference between "this is," "these are," "that is," and "those are. She did a great job, using her chalk as an example: holding one chalk, pointing at that chalk, holding many pieces of chalk, then putting them down and pointing at them. In my mind, though, I just kept thinking, people don't really say, "These are chalk." Usually, people would say, "These are pieces of chalk." Putting that thought aside, it was then time for the kids to get out their workbooks and work on an assignment, which she wanted me to lead. Okay, great! This is where a little bit of frustration set in for me. I tried to use the same teaching style as the teacher. I tried to get the kids to repeat what I said. So why did they seem to stare at me like I had three eyes!?! They responded so well to the teacher! Hmm.
Then, the alphabet. Simple, right? They know the alphabet and the sounds, but the teacher wanted me to go through it and give the sounds to each letter so they could learn my accent (remember, flip and fleet, and flat and fl-ah-t?). Keep in mind I have no experience teaching this sort of thing. So am I supposed to just give the vowels the soft sound and ignore the hard sound? What sound does and "x" make other than, well, x? And is a "c" the same as a "k" or the same as an "s"? And "q," that stinkin "q." I was wishing my sister was here at this point to give me some tips. Well, I guess I can find comfort in the fact that they don't know any better than what I told them. Ha...that's kind of awful.
For math, they reviewed ordinals, 1st, 2nd, 3rd...through 20th. So, thankfully it was JUST review and she didn't have me teach anything new. I just went around and helped them with their workbook.
Okay, so I probably made it sound like today went horribly. It really wasn't THAT bad, and the teacher still seems so happy to have me. Actually, she probably thought I did a great job since she had no idea what was really going through my mind during all of this. Hopefully I'll do better when I'm prepared ahead of time.
Oh, and guess what? She wanted me to try to think of some more creative ways to teach "this, these, that, and those" tomorrow. I told her I have no experience with these (no pun intended) kinds of lessons plans, but righto! I'll see what I can do! She said it's okay if I don't find anything, so I'll do my best while hanging onto that bit of comfort. It's hard to get creative when I can't print anything from my computer, or have to already have a hard copy in order to make more copies at a place down the road from the school. Yeesh. (And here, I can here my dad saying, "well, back when I was a teacher, I had to write out every assignment," or something like that. But maybe he's not quite that old...)
Anyway, I headed back to the Barn after that, ate my peanut butter and jelly sandwich on tortilla bread (because if I bought bread it would probably mold before I could use it all), and read in my room for a while. Later, Lauren, Anderson, and I went to eat at a Mongolian food restaurant where you fill your bowl with whatever you want and then they cook it for you. Seemed like a conglomeration of a bunch of random stuff, but it was still yummy! Afterwards, Lauren needed to buy some groceries, so we all went on a hike to the market to do that and walked through D-Mall, which is an area that's actually pretty nice and is where you can buy souvenirs and nicer clothes. I hadn't seen that yet, so that was cool. We then headed back to the Barn and I've been typing ever since! It's so funny how it gets dark so early here and I always think I need to be in bed when it's only 7:00. Hopefully that will keep me on a good school schedule!
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