I am not sure why Friday nights are such a popular night for parties, social gatherings and grandiose plans because I don't know about you, but by the time Friday rolls around, I've got one thing on my mind: bed. I know that there has been research done saying that if you want to sleep good at night, you shouldn't use your bed for anything other than sleeping. The research might be true for some people but to me, my bed is the relaxing in the same way most authors describe the sacredness of a bubble bath. So here I sit in my favorite sweatpants, surrounded by blankets and pillows, and listening to the chatter of my roommate and her friends coming from the living room. I've been waiting for this moment all week. With the arrival of the Kindergartners this past Monday, my job quickly turned from challenging to daunting and without the immediacy of another school day awaiting me in the morning, I am finally able to unstrap the stress and anxiety I have been carrying around since Monday and leave it at the door.
That being said, here are some things I have learned through the process of becoming a 9 day old teacher:
1. nothing is sacred! If it is in your classroom, it will be touched and probably broken so don't bring in things you really care about!
2.kids love Science equipment. Who knew safety goggles would be such an effective way to turn my students into active and engaged Scientists?!
3.Classroom "design" aka - the way you set things up, totally matters! I learned that in order to keep my students from using my sink and creating a huge water mess, I need to have a basin of soapy water accessible at all times. If crayons are in plain sight, they will be spilled and/or used to color things that should not be colored. By moving my supply table from behind the students, to the front of the room, I am much more able to keep my students engaged, especially when teaching something that requires a lot of supplies and I am a lot calmer throughout my delivery (I also sweat less. . . well. . . not really, I sweat a lot).
4. There is something really rewarding about learning how to speak the "language" of all of my different classes.
5. One of the best and most important parts of why I am a teacher is passing students in the hallway and being able to greet them by name. Students have a need to be known and cared for, just like adults do!
6. I need to start collecting egg cartons, newspaper and old sour cream containers. The egg cartons can be containers (like for rock collections) and/or art supplies. The newspaper is not something I tried yet because I don't have any but I think that if I were to put newspaper on my tables either at the beginning of the day or the beginning of each class I would significantly reduce the time I spend scrubbing gunk off my tables at the end of every day. I want sour cream containers to put my crayons in so that I can grab however many containers I need for the specific class I am teaching without having to scramble to divide up the crayons and then scramble to clean them all up later. My current system makes me sweat a ton.
7. Teaching on such a tight schedule leaves me really dehydrated. I still haven't figured out how to remedy that.
8, In Science, containers are like gold and are used for everything. In 2 weeks I have almost completely depleted the supply of plastic cups that my room was stocked with because doing Science in a hands on way requires lots of containers!
9. My lunch is at 10am, which is ridiculous to most people but I realized earlier this week that 10am has been a favorite meal time of mine for a long time! So, even though it looks like I got the shaft, I don't have to eat with anyone else which gives me 15 minutes of necessary solitude and I get to maintain a favorite mealtime of mine. ( I didn't actually eat lunch Tuesday - Friday of this week because my lunch is right before my Kindergartners come and I needed the time to child-proof my room. But, I am going to bask in the glory of my 10am mealtime every time I have some downtime to enjoy my lunch).
10. Kids love live things! Bring monarch caterpillars into the classroom made "Ms. Nolte's Science Room" a very popular place this week.
11. It's important to love what you're doing, and who you are doing it for, even when you hate it (and them).
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