Friday, May 7, 2010
Today started as all the others, at 6:30am. We have to be in the vans by 7:15am to make sure we all get to our given schools on time. The morning comes way to early some times. Breakfast was the same as it had been all the other days, oatmeal. Yummy.
The teaching part of the day was similar to Wednesday because Ms. Douglas was there (the PE specialist). We tried not to over-take her class. It is a fine line of working with a teacher and appearing as if your teaching the teacher. We do want to teach her our best practices and suggest new games but we don’t want her thinking that we don’t believe she can do the job that she is hired to do (and that we are similar volunteering to do). I have learned that Ms. Douglas LOVES the “hokey pokey” and “scrambled eggs”. In all the classes, no matter the grade we played both of them several, several, several times…It was frustrating at some points because she would spend 15 minutes (half of the PE class) on stretches. Half way through the day we were able to kindly suggest that we shorten the stretching time and then that would increase the games time.
I have also discovered that she has little patience for those children who are slower. I think she is just frustrated with them because they don’t process as fast as the other kids. She’ll smack the kids because they appear they are not paying attention or that they don’t care, which isn’t the case at all. There are a good handful of students who are much slower. I feel for them because no one seem to have the patience for them. I think about how different it would be for these students if they were in Canada. The support they would get and the proper learning environment. It makes me realize how incredibly blesses we are in Canada.
The rest of the day was ordinary. Dinner, chatting, hanging out, ect. We tried not to stay up to late because the catamaran trip was the next day.
Today started as all the others, at 6:30am. We have to be in the vans by 7:15am to make sure we all get to our given schools on time. The morning comes way to early some times. Breakfast was the same as it had been all the other days, oatmeal. Yummy.
The teaching part of the day was similar to Wednesday because Ms. Douglas was there (the PE specialist). We tried not to over-take her class. It is a fine line of working with a teacher and appearing as if your teaching the teacher. We do want to teach her our best practices and suggest new games but we don’t want her thinking that we don’t believe she can do the job that she is hired to do (and that we are similar volunteering to do). I have learned that Ms. Douglas LOVES the “hokey pokey” and “scrambled eggs”. In all the classes, no matter the grade we played both of them several, several, several times…It was frustrating at some points because she would spend 15 minutes (half of the PE class) on stretches. Half way through the day we were able to kindly suggest that we shorten the stretching time and then that would increase the games time.
I have also discovered that she has little patience for those children who are slower. I think she is just frustrated with them because they don’t process as fast as the other kids. She’ll smack the kids because they appear they are not paying attention or that they don’t care, which isn’t the case at all. There are a good handful of students who are much slower. I feel for them because no one seem to have the patience for them. I think about how different it would be for these students if they were in Canada. The support they would get and the proper learning environment. It makes me realize how incredibly blesses we are in Canada.
The rest of the day was ordinary. Dinner, chatting, hanging out, ect. We tried not to stay up to late because the catamaran trip was the next day.
