Today was my first day in the 4th grade classroom I'll be student teaching in for 10 weeks. I have 19 students and will end up teaching science, English, math, and reading, plus various other lessons that come up as needed. I had been looking forward to the entertaining stories my students would give me and they did not disappoint.
Before school even began for the day, my supervising teacher, Mrs. J, was showing me around the school/classroom. There are two big windows in our room facing the street... at perfect eyelevel for little school children to tap on the glass and peek and wave at us. I think I met more kids that way than I did walking around the school. A lot of them just stared, but a few waved and some even struck a pose. About half of them were my soon-to-be students.
My first action as student teacher was to find out all their names... this was rather difficult as the 4th graders decided to play "Make-the-student-teacher-guess-our-names-as-we-cover-up-our-nametags!" They all gave the same excuse, "Oh you should know our names! We were the ones banging on the window before school." Right. I could totally guess your name through the glass. Ahem. Most of the time I got it right because their pod-mates would let their real names slip. One kid tried to pull a fast one on me, but Mrs. J had told me his name when he walked in the classroom, so I ended up getting the best of him.
Two high school Spanish students showed up to teach the 4th graders Spanish. Apparently it was a review day of animal vocabulary. Spanish must've changed since I learned the language because I'd never heard some of the pronunciations the girls were using to describe the animals. All I could think of as I watched them was, "Hmm, if I were teaching, this is what I would change... there is no way all those students are engaged during this game... maybe if they did this..." I guess that means I'm ready for teaching.
A couple other funny incidents...
Our class moved around a lot throughout the day, going to music class, recess, lunch time, computer, bathroom breaks. It seemed almost every half an hour we were getting in a line to go somewhere. The two line leaders took their job very seriously. In fact, they would not lead the line until EVERYONE was in a perfectly straight line. The two boys would step back, eye up the line... wave one of the girls to the left a little... then switch sides to see if the line stayed straight. If the girl didn't listen, he'd call her by name, perhaps a bit more sharply than necessarily, but she would move. And finally when we were up to our fearless line leaders' standards, we would set out on our trek down the hall, making sure to use "marshmallow feet" as we clambered up stairs and down echoey hallways.
The last incident of the day involved Adrian Peterson... in science class. My group of 4th graders goes next door to Mrs. M for social studies twice a week and her students come to my class for science on those days. Today was my first day meeting Mrs. M's 4th graders. We were watching a short film about the skeletal system and Mrs. J paused the video on a picture of the ligaments around the knee. She asked the class if they knew who Adrian Peterson was. "YEAH!" "Do you know what happened to him?" A few of them guessed, but Mrs. J wanted the answer, "He blew out his leg." She continued, "When someone blows out a knee, that means the ligaments got torn, so they aren't connecting the bones anymore." Half the class immediately let out a loud, whiny, "EWWW!" One girl was so devastated, she asked, "Did he cry?" Before Mrs. J could answer, a boy called out, "NO, he's a big, tough guy!" This wasn't a good enough answer, so the girl asked again and the boy repeated his first statement with even more gusto. Thankfully, I was in the back of the room, so it wasn't too hard to hide my laugh.
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