Teacher for a Day

If there is one thing I learned this week, it was to have an even greater respect for teachers, especially those of very small children.

On Friday, I had a kind of special opportunity to teach a classroom of kindergarteners by myself for the day.  By "special opportunity" I mean that I got an email about volunteering with Junior Achievement for Eller and I decided to do so without the realization that it would be quite as a big a deal as it was.  Junior Achievement is an organization that teaches all ages of students at mostly underprivileged schools a variety of business concepts through fun age-appropriate lessons that help them to understand the world and encourage them to go to college.  A few weeks ago, I went to a two hour training where I was told a little bit about JA, given a big heavy kit of lesson plans, and told to get ready accordingly!  So, although it kinda stressed me out, especially last week, I did as I was told.  The lesson plans weren't really a big deal because I was assigned to a Kindergarten class who was of course learning very simple things.  I had some difficulty getting in contact with the teacher and finally found out on Tuesday or so that my class had a substitute teacher with no school email and was teaching an entirely ESL class.  That scared me.  I would say that communicating with those who don't speak a lot of English is one of my biggest weaknesses, so I was really worried I wouldn't be able to get through to the class, especially by myself.  However, I prayed that God would lead me, and made some extra preparations like show and tell items that would make comprehension a bit easier.

I suppose you could say I was pleasantly surprised.  I ended up in a classroom teaching about 21
5- year olds for the day.  Yikes.  However, most of them spoke fluent English, there were only about 5 who really didn't understand at all.  That made things a little difficult, because they would chat with each other in Spanish rather than trying to listen to me.  However, overall, the students were actually pretty well behaved and got really excited about the items that I brought in.  It made me really proud and excited to see them understand the concepts I was trying to get through and made me feel special when they grabbed my hand and pulled me onto the playground with them during a break time.  By the end of the day, I was really exhausted and the children were definitely getting quite antsy too.  However, I was also proud of both them and myself.  And though I know that I will never feel a calling or passion to teach for my life, I think I did a pretty good job and it was definitely a memorable experience!