I love you with all my heart

Teaching is going great. I have had a few days teaching the PE classes, and most of them have been year three and under. Now as many of you know, those probably would not be my favorite grades, but they are really growing on me. I had a great lesson planned for the year ones the other day and my coo-op thought it looked great, so I was ready to go. Well it was one of those lessons that you figure out very quickly is going to tank. So you scramble to come up with simpler more basic games for them to do. The locomotor game I had planned for them went from using different movements to move around the space while tossing beanbags, to lets stand in one specific spot and do beanbag toss relays. I was looking around and thinking "Holy smokes I just bombed that one!" My co-op gave me some encouragement through that though. He said that even for him if 50% of his first grade lessons go like planned he is happy. He thought I did a good job reorganizing the task so that it turned into something that they would be successful with. So in my eyes I completely sunk with the anchor, but from the outside he said it really was not that bad. One of those teacher lessons learned. I had the other first grade class today and with adjustments that lesson went a lot better. Also, after that class my co-op walked up to me and said "That class is probably in the top three worst classes in the school, and you had them sitting quietly around the blue circle, I am stepping back, you can have those guys." Haha, it was probably a combination of a few things that they were able to sit today, but it was a great feeling to hear that. 


Another teaching story for you. I taught my first English lesson ever on Monday; I was not really nervous, but I had planned a fair amount for the lesson so I felt ready...which was a good thing I did. On the outside it seemed like a very simple Spelling lesson, but it used lingo even I had to look up. What is a grapheme? What the heck is a digraph? Well I now know. So planning went well; it was fairly cruisy apart from the lingo, I just had to go through the tasks in the workbook and explain a few new prefixes. Here is the fun part, during my lesson I had a few guests.......my co-op was sitting in the back, my principal walked in, and my supervisor was in town with a group of 4 Indonesian teachers that also visited my classroom. My Supervisor was there for pretty much the whole lesson, which did not phase me much, but my co-op told me bits of information after the fact that probably would have made me a lot more hesitant during my lesson. I found out that not only was my supervisor just sitting in on my first English lesson, but she is the English curriculum overseer for all of Queensland, so the lady knows her stuff. I haven't taken an English class in 3 years and probably grammar in about 7, so I am a little rusty to say the least. However, she was impressed with the research I did for my lesson, and said that she thought it was a great lesson. That was one of those times that you say thank you God for making me prepare extra for this lesson!! Glad that was not a lesson where corners were cut (not that I ever do that). 


Ending on an "awww" note today. I had my preps today (also known as preppys and basically Kindergarten in the States). One of the little girls in this class just has a mega personality, she has something to say about everything, and she knows how to voice her opinion; probably also one of the smallest in the class. We were going over playground rules and they all have their own to add to ours right, so Abbey pipes up and says "And no saying cheeky words and poking people in the stomach. It is not nice!" Hahaha, yes! Best rule ever. When I was lining them up later she came over to me and looked up and started with the "Umm.....umm....." and then said "I love you with all my heart" and gave me a great big leg hug. Talk about making my heart melt:) 


Great day of teaching. I am preparing for tomorrow's all school Cross Country Meet (which they also call carnivals over here.....a bit confusing for me). Should be a good finish to the week. 




 Romans 6:23 “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”