Birthday Fun and Tutoring!

Heyyooo! So my birthday was yesterday! It was pretty cool. My day started out with the morning prayer at school. Each day we all line up by class (ok I'm not a teacher of a specific class so I just stand on the side) and the kids/teachers say the Pledge of Allegiance in English and then Spanish. After that, they do a prayer. At the beginning of each week, they do a prayer for the students whose birthdays are that week. Only this time, they included me too! So, I stood up there with a 1st grader and 6th grader and the rest of the school (all 200 of them) said a prayer for us! It was nice. Then of course all the kids knew it was my birthday so they would shout out "Happy Birthday Miss Devlin!" throughout the day and a few kids even came up to give me hugs! :) Aw, so cute!

I went to go teach the Pre-K in the morning and after the class was over they all sang happy birthday to me! To take the computers over to the building where the Pre-K is, I have to take two trips so on my way back, when I walked in they were having a dance party! It was so funny to see these little 4 yr olds dancing to pop music all together hahaha!

I also got some spontaneous singing from a few of the grades. I felt bad in the 4th grade because I went in to just get the two kids I am tutoring, but the whole class stopped the lesson to sing me happy birthday (and then a round of "may the good Lord bless you!") But the teacher was singing along, so it was all right! But when they started to do the "cha cha cha"s, she stopped them!

When I took the computers to the 7th grade after lunch, a few of the girls decided to write "Happy Birthday Miss Devlin" on the board in markers and draw balloons and streamers. Then 3 of the girls sang me a birthday song on the spot. It was funny! For the lesson that day, I had the kids make a party invitation in Microsoft Word to their own birthday parties. It went really well! It's sometimes hard with the middle schoolers to get them to focus, but they were mostly in tune to the assignment yesterday. Maybe they were just being good because it was my birthday?

I also started tutoring this week. I'm tutoring 5th-8th grade in Math, 4th in reading, a few 3rd graders in Math and a couple 1st graders in reading. I had to brush up on my elementary math, but it's a lot easier than I remember it being in school. When the kids ask me "Are you good at Math?" I have to remember to say "Yes!" instead of my usual "No..." because I must be good if I'm tutoring them right??? Well I've got up to 8th grade math down anyway, so to them, I'm good at Math!

At the end of the day yesterday, since it was also the Feast of St. Francis, the kids all got popsicles and pencils! I was the one handing out the pencils (all sparkly!) and there was always a crowd trying to figure out the best pencil for them. One of the 7th grade girls was joking around with me about how important it is to get the right pencil and she said "If you get the wrong one, it might write French!" haha I thought that was hilarious!

The kids crack me up most of the time! Last week, one of the 4th graders (Angelica) asked me "Are you a Judas?" haha. She meant a Jesuit I think because Mr. Chavez was telling his class that I'm a Jesuit Volunteer! Also, this one little preschooler, I pretty much see her every morning and she always goes "Hi computer teacher!" So cute! And another one of the 4th graders (Tiffany) gave me a note with a heart in it the 2nd week and later on told me she cut her hair like mine! (which was funny because it looks nothing like mine) And then there is the 1st grade girl that likes to say "Yum Yum!" to me and point to my tummy hahaha. They are just so funny!

I'm really enjoying teaching more than I thought I would! Especially with the one-on-one tutoring, I feel like I am imparting knowledge and making a difference!