First Day in the Classroom

Heading to the first day of class at Lynedoch was a bit nerve racking. I wasn’t sure what to expect even though Chelsea, Thijs and I has plans made. We didn’t know how long things would take or how the kids would react to everything. Mrs. April did a great job of putting us at ease and making us feel like no matter what we couldn’t mess up. We began with introductions and I realized that after the first few had gone answers were becoming very similar. They all seemed to like net ball or soccer and KFC. I think it helps point out that a goal for the semester should be to show students that they are all individual and finding the qualities they have that others don’t is what makes them unique.

Once we were back inside students wrote on each other’s backs things they had learned or things they knew about each other. It was a pretty good activity, but I realized I have so much more to learn about these kids than their favorite color and I hope that they can have more to write at the end of the semester than the face that to them I am “a very beautiful lady.” It will be smart to come back to this activity. We realized that students were a bit more timid around us and so I wasn’t sure how much of what we were saying they understood. We did an activity where we wanted the students to write what love meant to them using words or pictures. We gave them what we thought were proper instructions, but they simply drew hearts and swirls. Either they will get less timid (which I assume is because of our race) or we will just have to understand that they understand less English than we think. I guess my number one hope after the first week is that we can begin to become open minded to one another and therefore work even better together (this being my small LSCE group and the Grade 5 group).

I have more to add about my new class, Conflict Transformation and Peacebuilding but I will write on my day off!