I'm Really Teaching!

My first real week of teaching started on Monday when I taught the 7^th grade! I was a little nervous, but grabbed all the confidence I could and pushed my cart of laptops into the classroom. The cart itself is a little hard to maneuver. It really should be pushed by two people and pretty much has a mind of its own. Sometimes a teacher will see me struggling and help out, but most of the time I'm on my own trying to push it to each classroom! But anyway, I got the cart to the 7th grade classroom early and waited for them to get back from lunch. I went through the lesson about passwords and had them all pick their own password then change it on the computer. They finished the lesson quickly, but luckily I had a backup plan of having them type in Microsoft Word a paragraph titled “What I like about Computers.” I went through the laptops later in the day and read through them. Everyone really liked computers because of games, Internet, music, Youtube, Facebook, Myspace, etc. Except one little boy named Diego who wrote “I don’t like computers because they are unreliabel. And if you have one you might get robed” I’m guessing he meant robbed. Those are two pretty good reasons, Diego! Thanks!

That night, Jen and I decided we wanted to craft to decorate the house, so we drove to Wallgreens and got some poster board and markers ($5 to decorate, not too bad!). We created flowers for our room, a sign in our kitchen that says CASA NACHO and a cactus called Alejandro (pictured:) Jeff and Erin helped out with the Casa Nacho sign as well, so it's a community effort! Also, Mr. and Mrs. Chavez (Spanish and 1st grade teachers) brought over some chili for our house. It was so nice of them!! And really tasty! We had it for dinner Tuesday and it was the main part of my lunches for two days in a row!

On Tuesday I taught 4^th grade in the morning and 8^th after lunch. The age groups are so different from each other! But even in each class there will be much disparity in terms of how much they know about computers. These kids haven’t had computer classes before (at least not at this school) and may not have one at home or even touched one before. So, I shouldn’t be surprised if they don’t know how to turn it on or how to click and drag. Most of the 8^th graders had some computer sense, but some of the 4^th graders struggled. It doesn’t help that I didn’t have enough laptops for each kid! (Some are broken!)

Wednesday, I started by teaching 2^nd grade in the morning (adorable!) 6^th grade after lunch (not too bad) and ended with 1^st grade (cute!) For the 2^nd and 1^st graders it’s kind of difficult because some of the kids know a lot more than others. But luckily, especially in 2^nd grade, I got a lot of help from the students. Two of the girls helped me pass out the computers and the ones who were sitting next to people who needed help mostly helped out. There are 27 kids in the 2^nd grade though, so some of them had to share laptops. I asked beforehand who wanted to share because I figured that would be easier. For the younger kids, I started with a game of Simon Says to see if they could "point to the screen" and "put your finger on the mouse!" Then I had them log in and use the Paint application and draw a picture. Most of them were scribbling, but I saw a couple cool tidbits of art in there!

Mr. Mount, the volunteer IT guy, came in and showed me a bit more about the computers and the internet. The wired internet works fine at the school, but the wireless is iffy. We think it's the router, but not totally sure. After some explanations and a couple (failed) attempts at fixing computers #12 and 23, Mr. Mount went on a long 20ish minute rant about how the kids should not be using computers this young. He justified it by comparing to how the younger kids lose their math facts if they use calculators. At the very end of the rant he goes, "not to belittle your job or anything." uhhh yeah thanks Mr. Mount;)

Today, I taught the 3rd grade. They were SOOO excited to each have their own laptop (for the lesson). I've been hearing for the past two weeks how unruly and badly behaved this class is, but I thought they were great. They have one of the ACE teachers this year, (Christie) and I think she's doing a good job disciplining them! When they were too loud in Spanish class, she had them each personally write an "I'm sorry" note to the Spanish teacher. He read some of them to me today. They said things like "Dear Mr. Chavez, I'm sorry I was bad. Have a great day." haha so cute.

So, yeah that's my week so far! I'm at Pima Community College on an internet binge with Jen. I've learned I'm not going to Mexico this weekend, but we might go hiking and other fun things! Will update! Also I've decided it would be great to get internet at home (Ok..I always wanted that) and the Cricket outcome isn't looking great :( But we'll see!!!