Adventures in Teaching

Second graders excited to perform their readers' theater!

This past week I had a wonderful opportunity to teach during the Extended Learning Time our school offers to students who are below grade level.  I taught 2nd grade ELA (English and Language Arts), and we had a blast!  I had two classes of 12 students each and team taught with another second grade teacher who taught math.  It was quite challenging simply because the majority of the students who are below grade level tend to be behavior problems as well.  Thankfully there were only two students who were really difficult.  The rest of the students worked hard, and for the most part were able to focus well.

I'll be honest, I didn't enjoy every moment of last week.  There were some days when I came home exhausted and frustrated, feeling like I wasn't making a difference at all with these kids.  There were moments where I felt like maybe I'm just not cracked up to be a teacher at all.  All those feelings vanished by Friday though!  All week I'd been working on a readers' theater with the kids, and they performed it on Friday for the other class.  They did such a fantastic job in that five-minute performance that I suddenly felt like all the headaches and frustrations of the week had been worth it.  Last week was a chance to reaffirm my desire to teach and have my own classroom someday.

It's going to be difficult to go back to work tomorrow as just a teaching assistant.  It's always hard to let go once you've had a taste of what you really love!  I've been praying for a teaching position of my own and yesterday I felt God telling me that I'm exactly where he wants me right now.  The word "strategic" kept coming back to me.  As a teaching assistant I'm in a unique position to get to know the students on a different level since I'm not in responsible for all the duties of the full-time teachers.  While talking to God I also felt him saying that he is preparing me for future teaching opportunities, they just might not be what I expect.  I have a wonderful peace about where I am right now, but I look forward to the future with hopeful anticipation to see where God leads me!