As a teacher a lot of people ask me what my day consists of. Some think that I wake up thinking about ways to engage my students and most of them are correct. Being an elementary school teacher is different because everything I do revolves around what I will do with my children that day in the classroom. Every morning I would love to put on my nice slacks and button down blouse, but I have to immediately think about what my students will be doing that day in class and dress accordingly. For example, last week my students worked on dissecting a frog for our science class so I had to dress in my nursing scrubs to make sure any animal fluids did not get on any of my “good” clothes.
Amidst my students squealing and hollering about my lesson on the anatomy of a frog, I realized that I was going to be observed by my principal so I had to not only worry about one of my 5th graders acting silly from having to look at the organs of a frog, but I had to worry about being observed during the last period of the day. During my thirty minute lunch I decided to look over my students’ activities to make sure I had not missed anything, and I made some necessary seating rearrangements to make sure that the class flowed smoothly.
While my observation went smoothly, I had a couple of hiccups with my precocious students. One in particular decided, as soon as my principal entered, to scream as loud as he could because he realized (at that moment) that I was being serious when I said we would be dissecting a frog in class. In addition, one little girl (a vegetarian) began to cry because she said we were abusing the frog by cutting into it. Being that I had already anticipated having some hiccups like this, I quickly calmed the student who yelled and the young lady who didn’t want to cut into the frog by giving her an alternative assignment (yay, differentiation).
By the end of the day I was exhausted, but I had to stay after school for extended day and to get caught up on some grading. So by the time I got in my car to go home it was 6:30 and in less than twelve hours I had to do it again. It feels good to be a teacher!
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