the joys of being a teacher 1

some highlights from the week at the various schools i teach/work/intern:

*a student who i read with when i am in that class i am noticing can now completely sound out words on his own, even though he still doesnt because he isnt confident in ability yet.

*the same student, even though he doesnt like the work he has to do with me, i can tell were bonding and he likes me.

*a student came up to me at recess gesturing/acting like a bunny and called me “nuff nuff”. when i asked him what “nuff nuff” meant he said someone i see everyday that is really nice.

*a student that normally doesnt make an effort when it comes to reading/writing assignments, got right to work when i was sitting with her and really gave it a good shot and finished in a decent amount of time.

*i was grading papers, one where the students were working with affixes and drawing meaning from roots and affixes. one of the pages had sentences with blanks, for each sentence there were three choices of words to use to fill in the blanks. one of the questions said “my parents call me jeremiah jethro jacob johnson junior. i want them to _____ me” the choices were “refry”, “renew”, and “rename”. several students chose “refry” as the answer. another question said, “my grandmother can not read well because she is _____” i dont remember the choices but the correct answer was farsighted. before even looking at the choices, one student wrote in the blank, “old”.

*there are two boys in a preschool class (3 turning 4) who are good friends. while sitting on the carpet, one says to the other, “im the boyfriend and youre the girlfriend…” i dont remember the rest of the comment, but it was out the blue and they then proceeded to argue about who was going to be the boyfriend.

*a two year old picked up a bag of something purple and kept saying purple and maybe that she wanted to make purple. i went to the teacher work room and grabbed a huge bottle of blue, red, and yellow paints and pulled out some white paper. i asked each of the kids to pick two colors and then splashed some paint on the paper and let them finger paint/mix the colors. grasping the concept of color mixing was more successful when i did it with 3 year olds, but it was still just as fun and exciting.