28 July 2010

Day 3: Success!

Day 3 of practice school:

I finally feel like I get it! Both of my 45 minute lessons went pretty smooth. I totally forgot to go over the assigned homework the first time, so luckily I had 1 more class period to remember ;) I was observed by another EE for the first period, and I think that make me nervous at first. Plus, I have come to realize that I don't like to be rushed for anything. At 6 am I wake up because I like to relax, maybe get some work done, and plug in my water heater (but that's just a convenience). When I have 20 minutes to go to another building and wait for the computer and the printer, review my lessons to make sure I know what I'm teaching (which today I still had no idea), write things on the board to prepare for the lesson, and talk to my observer about my first 2 days, I just lose it and I get all worked up. I think that is what happened with the first lesson today and that is why it didn't go as smooth as the second, but it's ok because the kids were participating! They were volunteering answers! They were raising their hands! And they were actually understanding me.
Then I got to the second lesson- and it went even 10 times smoother. Everything finished up just on time, the kids totally got what I was saying, and if they were confused, I was able to read that and quickly think of another way to explain something and then I could actually see the transition of them understanding it. For homework last night, I had assigned them to draw their family tree (since that was the topic of the lesson). Because I know how I do homework, I was expecting something to be scribbled on a piece of scratch paper right before class started, or even during beak. But, no! There were a few students who had obviously put a lot of thought into what they were doing and they added colors and everything. That was great, and is making me think that maybe I should start putting more effort into my homework....

On a sidenote, if you have been reading my facebook, you may have seen that a lot of us have been quite ill lately! While we haven't narrowed down exactly what caused it, we are sure it had something to do with what we ate at the picnic on Sunday. I would say at least half, if not more of us, that were there have now come down with incredibly bad intestinal issues. While I could go into detail here, I won't. What I will say, though, is it is NOT fun and thankfully I'm not one of the worst cases and I'm feeling much better today. In fact, I haven't had to run to the bathroom once- which is a huge improvement over the last couple of days. However, some people are still battling with issues that began on Sunday, and some started as last as last night. Whatever it was, it got us all good. The Moldovans seem to blame the watermelon, saying it is not in season until the end of August, so what is on the market now is too large and it has been injected with some sort of hormone to make it ready early, and that is what is making us sick (we had watermelon). However, some people didn't eat the watermelon and they're sick, too. Knowing what I went through the last couple of days, I hope those that are still battling with it get better soon!!!

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