Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Oh the blessings

I've been loving my new job. No 8am is a not a perfect time, and 5 days a week has been difficult to get use too again, but I'm managing. I come home less that exhausted and can sleep in a tiny bit later than when I was teaching.
But already there are things that make me smile each day.
For example, one student Dylan is from Vietnam. He pronounces this l's as r's. So while singing his phonics song to me he sang, "J, juh...jerrybeans!" It was so cute. Now I have no choice but to call jellybeans "jerrybeans", just like I call noodles, "noogles." This little kindergardener also guesses wildly at his reading instead of looking at picture clues. As we read a book "I like" we came to a page with a boy sleeping. I prompted him, "I Like to ssssssss."
"I like to sandwich!!!!!
"No Dylan,-"
"I like to snake!!!"
ha ha, he never did get it. I finally had to tell him.
But even better is the blessing of knowing I'm helping these children. I have an 8th grader who most teachers have dismisses as un-motivated and is failing almost every class. (amazing after 4 weeks huh?)
I was dreading working with him thinking I was going to get resistance and attitude from a kid who didn't want me around him.
But on the second day he and I worked together to understand the preamble to the constitution. It only took about 15 minutes work outside of the class and he had a decent grasp of its meaning. As I started to leave that day, he looked me in the eyes and said, "Thank you."
Oh, that was better than any paycheck. And now each day I see him, his face immediately lights up. We always have big hurdles to tackle, but we are making progress in the right direction.

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