Sea legs

So as long as I'm up, at the computer and with my blog open...I may as well go for another post, right??? 

I wanted to post briefly that I feel I've finally got my sea legs under me in the classroom.  The first month-and-a-half at school I was working with a substitue teacher (who was fantastic!) while my teaching partner from South Africa was getting her visa details sorted out.  It took far longer than anyone anticipated, which is why they had to call in a long-term sub to start the school year.  Although he was a fantastic teacher and a calming presence in the classroom, it was stressful knowing that everything would change once the "real" teacher got here.

Now that she has been here for a full month, I am really starting to feel like I have direction and I know what I'm doing.  She is incredibly knowledgeable, very kind, gentle and soft spoken with the children, but also firm and demanding in her expectations of excellence from them.  I love her!  We are very much on the same page and I feel we make a really wonderful team.

Sadly, the move to Spain has been extremely stressful for her and a combination of stress and strange European viruses have got her feeling so bad that last Wed. she was admitted to the hospital!  I was not entirely alone in the classroom as the teacher coordinator was assiting me; but I was the one who knew what the kids' routine has been, what they've been working on and what they should continue, what new things could be presented, etc...

I was so proud of myself for being able to calmly take over the classroom and really keep the kids generally quite on track.  Of course, that is due in a very large part to all the groundwork laid jointly with my co-teacher in these past weeks, but still, if this had happened in the first weeks of school, I probably would have fainted on the spot or run home crying! 

Friday is art in the 1.5 hours after recess before going home and I felt so in control of the situation.  The night before I had the brainchild to experiment with color gradation.  They had previously done something similar with black and shades of grey.  So during the 30 min. of recess, I was madly making up an example, marking white cardstock so they could quickly draw a grid using a ruler, setting up the tables with palettes, brushes and water...  It went smooth as silk, and some of our most "difficult" children were completely absorbed in the activity.  I even had them finish in time to get the classroom cleaned up and in shape for them to go home on time. ;) 

I am very concerned for my co-teacher and hope she's back very soon, but I must say that Friday I was feeling pretty smug: large and in-charge! ;)