10,000 Hours of Deliberate Practice - 05/06/19

I just forgot to take my socks off before I stepped into the shower. It's been a long day. And I have wet socks now. Ugh. As a gymnastics teacher, today I pulled the "do I need to go get the principal?" card for the first time, and it worked like a charm. What a rush. I would never actually do it, but they don't need to know that.


Today I found it hard to strike a balance between being a "fun friend" and a teacher. In my gymnastics class, I had 4 first graders and 2 kindergarteners, the youngest group I've ever coached. I work with the majority of them regularly in their classrooms during the school day, and because I'm only a volunteer, I can get away with being more of just a "fun friend" and I leave all the instructing and controlling to the teacher. The challenge is that because I have always just been that friend to them, they don't really listen to me in a way that I would hope when I actually am the one in charge. Everyone knows that I am not the kind of person who will ever raise my voice and yell at a child, nor do I believe that that is a way that anything should ever be dealt with, but I am still trying to figure out ways to get kids to listen to me in a way that is effective for both me and them. I could use the "getting the principal" technique, but I don't really love the idea of scaring kids into listening to me. I have learned a lot, but I absolutely still have a lot to learn. It was a slightly more frustrating and tiring day, but I think it was an important experience for me to have, because the fact is that it isn't always going to be easy when I become a real teacher. Gladwell says "it takes 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to achieve mastery at something." Now I have 1 down, 9999 to go. It will get better and better. It just takes a little determination and patience.

This morning, I worked on crafts for Mandarin class tomorrow. I am planning to do some rock painting with my students, which I actually had a lot of fun doing and I think they will too. I'm not the most artistic person, but there's something particularly enjoyable about painting spherical animals on wonky rocks. I would highly recommend it to anyone.

At around 9:45, I went to Mr. Hubbard's class with a special delivery. If you recall, I was given the holy task of creating a baby this weekend. I'm not too certain what she ended up being named, but Frances/Rebecca/Shelby is going to have a good life. Her mother and her mother's friends all ran, and I mean RAN to me when I walked in the door, ready to receive the baby with open arms and big beaming smiles. If the saying "it takes a village to raise a child" is true, then Frances/Rebecca/Shelby is going to be raised very well by the third graders (as are Charlotte, Sebastian, Thor, the Boston Bruins baby, and the other ones whose names I can't recall). I have noticed that other "babies" are appearing in the classrooms too, we have moved up and beyond just plain old flour babies. Anyway, the third graders were taking a practice math test. It was interesting to me that the tests were online and on technology. As I walked around the room, students asked me for help, and I had them explain their thinking to me. The inner workings of a third grader's mind is kind of incredible. They didn't always come up with a fully accurate answer, but they always describe to me a very intricate thought process that I wish I could give them credit for.

I'm also trying to step out of my comfort zone more. As you can probably imagine, I'm that awkward girl at dances that just stands there laughing to pretend that she's enjoying herself so much and laughing too hard to dance, ultimately just to avoid having to dance. So the third graders did a dance circle after their practice test today. I did consider stepping out, but ended up deciding that I should probably get over my fear of groovin' it out, so I hopped in there with everyone else. It was INDEED very uncomfortable for me, but I did it, so it counts. 9,999 hours to go.

Mr. Hubbard said that he couldn't supervise recess today, and a bunch of students immediately pointed to me and yelled "LAUREN CAN!" Obviously, I am not an actual teacher at AEMS and LAUREN CAN NOT(!) actually supervise recess, but I did go out to recess for a little bit with the third graders before heading over to first grade. Boy, was that a different experience than being in the classroom! In first grade, the kids were taking math "tests" to review what they learned last week. I was in charge of taking 2 students at a time to take the "test" and they worked independently other than having me read the words to them. I noticed that all of them struggled on the questions where they were asked to explain their thinking, how they know that the answer is the answer. I found it interesting that so many students found it difficult to explain their thinking when they clearly knew what the right answer was. I realized though, that it is hard, even in high school, when we've been doing the same sorts of things over and over, we forget why something is what it is, we just know for a fact that it is. Students started writing a bit about their weekends in their story journals before I headed back over to third grade.

In the afternoon, third grade continued working on their Jack and the Beanstalk inspired stories. I was working with the student I've been working with the last few days on his story. He has a great mind. He had so much to tell me about his story and all the tiny little details, the challenge was just writing it down and changing the story from verbal to written. I ended up being a scribe for him, which was totally fun. Call me a dork but I love doing that kind of thing. I sat and wrote what he told me word for word, and watched as the story slowly came together. In case you're wondering, we are writing about a turtle named Jacob who accidentally plants an eggstalk and meets a giant Megladon. I also got to read a few stories written by other students, which was so much fun. Third graders are so creative and so, so funny. They come up with crazy things that I could never even dream up like it's second nature to them. The stories are just starting to develop and come together, and I am so excited to hear all the finished stories next week.

I already gave pretty much the whole shebang about gymnastics class up there, but after having calmed down a bit, I realize I didn't say all the parts of gymnastics class that were totally awesome. I noticed this with my other gymnastics group as well, but I love the way that older students are so patient and supportive of the younger ones. It makes my job a whole heckuvalot easier. All of the students today were so excited to be there and so excited to learn gymnastics, which made my heart happy. They are all talented at gymnastics and thrilled to be upside down and flipping around. The trouble just comes with keeping all of them busy when I only have hands to spot one person at a time. I have a lot of ideas for next time, so hopefully it'll run much smoother. As a whole though, I think class went pretty decently. We played a game that they had a lot of fun with, they all stretched properly, and they all got several chances to work on forward rolls, handstands, and cartwheels. It was really the in-between time that was stressful. I was so happy to see such fast improvement from the beginning to the end of the lesson (watch the video!).

In complete honesty, I was feeling pretty frustrated and down when I started writing this blog. Writing out all my frustrations and considering all the learning opportunities has made me feel a lot better. I realize, after thinking and writing down the smaller details of my day, that I subconsciously allowed a few challenging moments to define my whole day as "bad", when there were actually a lot of happy moments too. I am excited and hopeful for a better day tomorrow. Overcoming all the challenges that I face now will only make me better for later. It's going to be a good day, I'll make sure of it.

Time: 8:25
Hours: 8
Total Hours: 53