On Being My Son's Teacher

(edited after proofreading -- sorry about that)

You know, that hasn't been in my mind at all really lately. Well, of course, as I'll write more below, I've thought about how good it's been, but mostly, I've just enjoyed this week.

Can I first say how EXHAUSTED I am? I can't handle well getting up early (and 7 something a.m. is awfully early for me), my IBS has been acting up a bit, and I haven't been able to go to bed early. It's not even that I'm spending hours reading blogs, no!! I'm spending several hours a day on my training for the online teaching gig!

Problem is... school is from 8-2:45, then, when we get home, the boys watch their combo of Fetch! (it's beyond me how they can stand rerun after rerun -- good thing Season 3 is upon us, have you heard? AWESOME, even I will want to watch it. And it's in Boston and we've been to Boston this summer, so Kel will love it even more!) and WordGirl. I try to go straight to the computer to work on my training, except that I invariably begin to doze off, so I just go and take a nap, so I WASTE a good hour and a half of undisturbed time. Then, this week we always had things to do in the late afternoon/evenings (picking up K at the train, going to Delaware to do some shopping), so I had to stay up late to work on the training. Well, that's not what you want to know, I guess ;-).

So, how did it go? It went great! I still have to figure out what to do with Linton because apart from "reading" books in a corner he doesn't enjoy coloring, cutting, pasting, other potentially helpful things to keep him quiet and entertained (his attention span is way too short for anything like that), so he distracts the other kids. I just had an idea -- bringing his toy cars may help, but the other kids may want to play with them too... oh well...

I am still figuring out how things work, but it's pretty much like this: each child has a folder with many worksheets (torn from their respective math, phonics, reading books) and all I have to do it dole out those worksheets, explain what they have to do, get them back and give another one. Later, I grade each of them and put them in the folder that they take home. Once in a while pairs of kids have the same work to do, so they can work together, but mostly each of the 7 children works independently, unless we're doing an art project, or I'm reading to them.

Kelvin is pretty "lazy" and takes a really long time to finish his worksheets -- he's been like that from day one, though, so it's not me. The most interesting thing for me is that telling him that the other children have done twice or three times as many worksheets as him does not cause any effect on him. He's completely unfazed and he actually says "I don't mind, I don't really care..." Oh, the nerve. If he weren't ahead of everyone in math and perfectly where he needs to be with the other things I'd worry, but as it is he is fine.

The fact of the matter is that I really, truly, enjoy working with young kids. Particularly the 6-8 year olds, which is precisely the group I have. I've always loved working with children and having my son among them is simply icing on the cake, the cherry on top of my sundae. Because it is that great to be with him all day long, I'm unapologetic about it. I wish I could homeschool, but I truly can't, particularly not with how hard it is to get him to do stuff. I think that he's mostly bored with those sheets because he's addicted to gadgets, electronic, computer stuff. If all of our homeschooling could be done in the computer, we'd be FINE, I'm sure (and I know that nowadays we might be able to get away with that). Too bad that homeschooling doesn't pay well ;-) (of course I won't earn much being a "teacher's aid" either, but at this point I don't care, I'm just happy to be there working with these children).

I wasn't really concerned that it would be hard to be in the position of being my son's teacher, but I didn't expect that it would be that easy (at least so far) and go so well. This goes on to show that we do have a great relationship, my son(s) and I. In fact, whenever I went to his school during the past year he would just hug me repeatedly and be really glad that I was there. Sometimes he asked whether I could just stay longer (I never stayed for long because I was afraid I would be bothering the teacher, particularly because I always had Linton with me)... so, I guess he's happy to have me around all day long. And it's a good thing that he still has the other teacher two days a week. That will help to keep things balanced, since I'm not the only one he's got to be accountable for regarding school work.

So... I'll keep you posted, but so far I'm happy. It's busy work, but the fact that I don't really bring any work home and don't have to do much preparation really helps (not that I don't plan to do various activities with them -- particularly lots of reading and children's literature, as well as singing [there hasn't been much singing in school at all -- today we did some and they enjoyed it], games, and other things). It will be a very busy, but hopefully fun year, I can tell!

P.S. This tiny school has always been very diverse, and I think it's even more ethnically diverse now. Unfortunately the Spanish speaking children, all 5 of them, left, but all nine new children are half Hispanic (they don't speak Spanish, though). Four of them are also partly African American, so there are 6 A.A. kids in a group of 16. (Dawn, I can't wait to read Nina Bonita to the sweet 6 and 7 year old African American sisters in my class). So, the count again: 1 Asian Am., 2 "hapas"[half Asian], 9 partly Hispanic, 6 African Americans [4 in the previous group], and only two white (one American, one Brazilian -- my son). I plan to emphasize diversity in our readings too...