First Day Teaching Kindergarten

I am sitting on my kitchen floor beside the refrigerator evaluating myself on my first day teaching Kindergarten. Why am I on the kitchen floor? Well, at the moment it is the only place in the apartment where I can get enough WiFi signal to connect to the internet, haha. I am hot, sweaty, tired, my head is throbbing with a killer headache (probably because I didn't drink enough water today).

"How did the first day go?!" I am sure you are all wondering. To an outsider looking in, I'm sure that my day wasn't too bad. However, I tend to evaluate myself more harshly than an outsider would. I won't say it was a bad first day, but it did not quite go how I was expecting. The biggest thing that stood out what the Creole/English language barrier. My students understand very little English. I can speak Creole (not fluent yet). Switching back and forth between Creole and English was more difficult than I had expected it to be. I seemed to keep getting tongue tied between the two languages. I was speaking "Crenglish". It was very hard to focus on the actual material that I was teaching and which language I was teaching it in. Thankfully, Mr. Nickson was in and out of my room throughout the day to help with translating as needed. I found that when he was helping translate, things flowed much more smoothly. It was a blessing to have his help. He and Dottie decided to hire a former TLC student to help me with translation. Thank you, Lord!

As any good teacher will do (not that I am claiming to be a good teacher), I have been evaluating and reflecting upon how I did today. There are more than a few things that I need to improve as time goes on. For one thing, I need to get a better feel for the curriculum. I have read through it and understand how it is set up, but until I actually apply it in a classroom, it is hard to see how things will work. I need to improve on my timing. At one point today, I realized that I was an entire HOUR ahead of where I should have been according to my plans. By the end of the day, I somehow managed to get my timing back on track. I realize that once I get to know my students and their abilities, I will have a better idea of how much time is needed for each activity. My students are all very young and many of them really struggled on staying focused today. I realize that it was only the first day, and like me, they are adjusting to being back at school. This list of things to work on could very easily go on forever, but for your sake, I will keep that to myself.

My 11 little students blessings are just as adorable as you could imagine, and I look forward to building a loving and trusting relationship with them.  I pray for rest, creativity, patience, compassion, and an overabundance of love for my students.  I ask God for strength as I adapt to my new adventure!

I promise that in the future I will write a more detailed post about my students and the school, but for now my head is throbbing and my plan book and bed are calling my name!