Job.

Whew - just under the wire again. 11:57PM post start-time.

Today I resumed my job: running after school camps. It was my first chance to apply some of the teaching strategies I'd learned in my Ed program. Though I've had 5 months in the program, and in that time I've been able to reflect upon how I'd apply the dozens of teaching strategies I've learned and practiced, I found today, that when the rubber hit the road, none of it mattered.

Kids are good - but today was probably the hardest group to control I've ever had for an hour. It was a private school, uniforms and all, and I was told by a staff member that the kids at the school were all well behaved, "except for a few turkeys", but what I found was quite the opposite. Kids were bouncing off the walls, rolling around on the floor and table tops, and I had to break up a few boy wrestling matches at the beginning of class. It was like they had all been fed candy and Redbulls for the hour prior to camp's start. I probably spent at least a good 1/4 of my time waiting for them to quiet down - not all at once - but as a total throughout the class, and as a result I didn't get through my entire lesson plan. To be fair, our camps are normally between 12 and 18 eight-to-ten-year-olds in size, which is a manageable number for an after-school camp, but today it was 26. eesh.

I don't mean to complain - I love my job - but I wonder, or at least hope, that kids don't behave like this all day long. The stuff I teach them is FUN - I can only imagine if what I had to teach them was math! .. I'd like to think that being an actual teacher comes with some inherent sense of authority which makes kids behave better - and I'm sure there is, but there's always that sliver of doubt that makes me dread having to face a group like this when I'm teaching as a profession, and am actually required to get the curriculum through to them. ...and this is why I'm teaching highschool. HA!

The is a gleam of sunshine, however. The job, which is going to be 2 or 3 times a week at different schools, both requires and allows (and me to afford) me to put my car back on the road, which is worth celebration. But more on that tomorrow.