Thrown For a Loop

I'm getting ready to start teaching this morning, walk into my class this morning to my favorite 13 smiling faces, only to have an administrator at the school come up and ask me (tell me) to teach another class because a teacher is sick. Obviously I can't say no, so she hands me a timetable (schedule) and points out what room I will be in. So I take a deep breath and head over there to a brand new classroom.

Now, my normal class has 13 2-3 year olds, and they are a handful. This one had 29 5 year olds. And to be honest, there isn't much lesson planning going on for 2-3 year olds, I have been doing a lot of the same things everyday, just basic shapes, colors, numbers and a few letters each day. But let me tell you, 5 year olds, they are with it. I have no lesson plan and no real idea what to do with them. And since there are 30 of them packed in a classroom, I cant really have them running around the room like I do with the little kids when they are board. So, I walk in there, introduce myself, write my name on the board and write the letter 'A'. "So what is this?" "Aaaaayy," they respond in unison. "And whats this?" I say, drawing a picture. "Aaapplle," they chorus. "What does it start with?" "Aaaaayy." Ok well, this association would have taken me 5 minutes, here it took 6 seconds, and they already know it! Gulp.

But it turned out ok. We did shapes and transitioned from circle to wheels on the bus, which they liked. ('Whats this? A circle. What else is a circle? A wheel. What has wheels? A bus.....see its easy.) We played the game called, 'How many pencils is the teacher holding up?' We colored, practiced our tens, and sang 5 little monkeys. Three times. The aide in this class was actually really helpful, something I cant really say for my normal class. But they were very cute (though not as cute as my other class, fear not) and they seem to play a game during break called 'See how many students we can have climbing on teacher during break,' of which the winning number today was 9, so congrats on those that took the over on the o/u of 7.5. Overall it was a good experience, though I definitely think I would have preferred to have known about it so I could have prepared something in advance. Two more days of student teaching and then I'm done! Hopefully I'm back with my regular class tomorrow. Seeing all their sad faces as I waived goodbye convinced me that they really do love me. Even if that is just because I am too scared to discipline them and when I raise my voice to them its in English, so they have no idea what I'm saying and thus they just run around for 2 hours. Oh well. :)

No thai class today, sending out more resumes for jobs. Done on Friday night with training, still not really sure what I'm doing or where I'm going after this but I'll keep you updated! Hope everyone is doing well at home, T-9 days till Christmas, somebody better tell Thailand so they can put up some decorations already!

TPWWLT: Zero to Hero - Hercules Soundtrack