I still didn\u2019t feel great this morning and could have used another couple of hours of rest.\u00a0 Too bad I had to teach today.<\/p>\n
On this rainy day, I would be teaching Art in the middle school.\u00a0 I was a little apprehensive about teaching middle school because the kids are so immature.\u00a0 What I discovered though is that, while they are indeed squirrely, they are also easily intimidated.\u00a0 Just my mere presence caused the kids to quiet down.\u00a0 That would never happen at the High School!\u00a0 My wife tells me that it\u2019s because I\u2019m a male teacher and they aren\u2019t used to male teachers at the elementary level.\u00a0 The kids are still (mostly) little, and I\u2019m so much bigger!\u00a0 The Art class was a breeze and all the kids were great.\u00a0 I actually enjoyed this more than a lot of my High School experience so far.\u00a0 I could actually teach at the middle school level!<\/p>\n
I also observed a history teacher today as part of an assignment for class.\u00a0 I was really impressed by the teacher\u2019s control of the classroom and in how he taught this class of English Language Learners (kids who just came to America with only some English speaking ability).\u00a0 He had kids in there who knew very little English, and only a few who were proficient.\u00a0 Most were somewhere in the lower middle.\u00a0 He handled the class deftly and helped each reader out as they read aloud.\u00a0 He also arranged the tables based on reading ability, common primary language, and by sex.\u00a0 The girls are so much more mature than the boys at this age, so mixing the two doesn\u2019t work according to him.\u00a0 Tables with a common primary language help the tables during discussions.\u00a0 They can more quickly come up with a consensus on what the correct English response should be.\u00a0 The primary language ability enhances their understanding of their secondary language: English.<\/p>\n
At the end of the day, there was an assembly where we watched a 30 minute play (done by the theater students) on the dangers of drugs.\u00a0 It was actually a pretty good script, though the acting was hit or miss.\u00a0 The audience was so immature, bordering on rude, but then this is<\/em> middle school.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I still didn\u2019t feel great this morning and could have used another couple of hours of rest.\u00a0 Too bad I had to teach today. On this rainy day, I would be teaching Art in the middle school.\u00a0 I was a … Continue reading