I Think I'm Becoming a Kid Again - 05/10/19

During share day at AEMS, they had a magician come in to perform a show for all the students from K-8. It must have been a very difficult task trying to put on a show that would be both understandable and still exciting for all kids ranging from 5 years old to 14 years old. As the magician was doing his tricks, the kindergarteners and other younger students were much more entertained and enthralled by the magic, screaming and cheering and bouncing up and down when he asked for volunteers. On the other hand, the eighth graders looked less amused and were more trying to just figure out the illusions and tricks behind his magic. On an excitement scale from K-8, I definitely fell closer to the K side. Magic is wicked cool.

My morning started bright and early at 7am to finish prep for Mandarin this afternoon, and I arrived at AEMS at 7:45 for share day. I was assigned to help in a calligraphy workshop, which I probably participated in more than I actually helped. It was a really fun workshop and I think calligraphy is super cool, but it was 7th and 8th graders and a lot of it was just tracing, so I kind of felt like I wasn't much help. I had lots of fun learning calligraphy, but I think I may have been more helpful, in terms of the helping the kids, in a different workshop. Also, I have always been working with much younger kids, so I wasn't sure how much I should offer to help these older kids, and wasn't as familiar with how to interact with them. I made small talk with a few of them, but wasn't really sure how I could be of assistance to them. That said, I picked up a new skill (or at least started to!) and I'm really excited to work on calligraphy at home. I got to make a final product by writing a quote on watercolored card stock (top picture!).

After that, I dropped off ANOTHER FLOUR BABY to a girl in third grade who brought me her bag of flour yesterday. Also, yesterday she told me she wants a "really cute girl baby with a headband and a pink flower." Of course, I obliged, but do they realize that you don't actually get to pick the gender or appearance of a baby?? It's ok. Let them imagine. Let them be sweet. Let them pick the gender and appearance of their babies.

I hung out in first grade for a while until they headed up to the gym for the magic show. I already wrote a little about the magic show up top, but I felt that same feeling I felt when I was sitting with the K-5 students in the gym for their concert rehearsal last week. This will sound a tad cheesy but I felt like a real teacher when I walked at the back of the first grade line, and then stood on the side/back of the gym around all the students. I always remembered in my assemblies when I was younger how I would look around and see all the teachers standing their like guard with their feel slightly apart and their arms crossed as they scanned the sea of students. Somehow, standing in the place of the people that I always looked up to felt kind of right. I can see myself standing around a sea of students. Like this is what I want to do. It was kind of a crazy feeling not being one of those kids, but it was definitely a good crazy.

After share day was over, I headed over to the dining hall to do Mandarin with my gals. We were short one of our regulars, but we had a new student who switched in from the Tuesday group. I got ANOTHER BAG OF FLOUR. I think that's number SEVEN!! We also did rock paintings today, and it went really well. I really like this mix of students because I have a third grader, two fourth graders, a sixth grader, and an eighth grader. The older ones are really great about working with the younger ones, which is a huge help to me. They're a very sweet group of girls and I love teaching them. They were great sports from beginning to end, going out to collect rocks and painting them patiently. It's hard trying to plan things that will be fun for students that are 6 years apart in age, but I hope they still had fun. They were also all GREAT about offering to clean up afterwards, which I really appreciated. I would never expect people to help me clean up, but it was really nice that they offered. Because we were painting, we had a lot of time to just hangout and talk, and we had dinner together afterwards too, which was really fun. These girls are so much fun. It's totally my privilege getting to teach them. And...we're getting excited for dumplings tomorrow!!



Time: 9:35
Hours: 11
Total Hours: 91