Beginning Teaching

In which our Heroine successfully teaches three classes, gets hit upon by the night manager at her hotel, navigates Greenville in the rain and finds a Target where she purchases, among other things, a bubble umbrella.

(Side note: perhaps I need to lay off the 19th century novels for a bit!)

I love my job. I'm exhausted after day 2 of teaching, but I love it. This is what I was born to be. I was really nervous about my adult class, but it went well; it's small, but everyone worked really hard, which was encouraging to me. I had my little kids today; they're really funny. I had one little boy who wanted to tell me all about his dog-most of them are pretty shy, though. I'm amazed at how easily I slip into the role of teacher; it's definitely a lot more natural than I thought it would be. Tomorrow, I have 3rd graders, a 4th-5th grade mixed class, and a middle school class. I'm not really sure what to expect with them, but I'm looking forward to it nonetheless.

As mentioned above, last night was weird. I realized that I had forgotten to pack toothpaste, so I went down to ask the manager for some. I was already in my sweats, wearing (what else?) a Meredith t-shirt, so when he asked me where I was from, I didn't think anything of it. I told him, and he goes "No, really?"

Thinking that was odd, I replied "Yes, really."

He responded "I would have sworn you were Portuguese or something"

My thoughts at this point: Portuguese?!?!? Um.... what?

My response: "Nope, both of my parents are Irish."

"Well, whatever it is, you wear it well. You're a pretty girl."

And then I walked away, toothpaste in hand, puzzling over the bizarreness of the encounter.

My last adventure (so far) has been driving in Greenville. This evening when I got back from dinner, my Twitter update read: Reason #45067 I will always be an MCG: my innate ability to find a Target in a strange city, no matter how lost I get there otherwise. I had been hoping I could find Target or a drugstore or something because I've had this sore throat since I got here and today's nasty rain didn't help at all. Sure enough, as I found somewhere to eat, I noticed a Target, so I ran in after eating and bought a DayQuil/NyQuil combo pack, some throat lozenges, a clear bubble umbrella (which I've been wanting for the longest time), and some dark chocolate. Hey, a girl has to celebrate a successful first week of teaching, right?

Now I'm in bed, getting ready to go over my lessons for tomorrow one more time. I teach all day tomorrow, then drive home in the evening and on Friday, I fly to Atlanta to teach all day Saturday and fly home Saturday night. I'm going to sleep all day Sunday, I do believe. Good thing I love my job so much!

On being a teacher

This morning, I had a wonderful breakfast/visit with my friend Kiran. She's a sweet girl who's just getting ready to start her senior year at my alma mater (which still sounds weird) as an English/Theater major. We've known each other for a while, but really bonded last semester in Chaucer; she was the one who showed me a Youtube video before class that made me laugh so hard I literally cried while sitting on the floor howling. Kiran rocks!

After our delicious breakfast at The Flying Biscuit, I did a few errands and then went to Tar-jay for my classroom supplies. I start next week as a summer teacher for the Institute for Reading Development and I could not be more excited. I filled my basket with teachery things: a massive box of crayons, paper, scissors, tape, hand sanitizer, bandaids, pencils, pencil sharpener, pretty-colored dry erase markers and erasers... teacher things. As I was checking out, the cashier remarked "Oh, you must be a teacher."

I started to reply "No," but then caught myself. "Yes ma'am, I am. Just stocking up on classroom supplies."

"Do you teach year-round? There's not usually much call for this stuff in June."

"No, I'm actually preparing to teach summer enrichment classes."

That was the end of our chat, but it made me realize something that I don't think had sunk in yet. I am a teacher. A real, live, trained teacher. And just because I don't have a teaching license from the state doesn't mean that my work will be any less valid. In fact, I think there are 2 important facts about my work this summer.

1) I've been trained for it. Sounds obvious, but it's not like they're throwing me in there with a bunch of books and kids and saying "Good luck (you'll need it)!" I've been working quite intensively since the middle of May to prepare for this and I think I'm pretty ready.

2) I love books and reading. Those two things combined are the whole reason why I'm doing this job (although monetary compensation is also nice) and because the point of this is to pass that love on, I think I'm going to be good at it. Scratch that. I know I will be. Because when I did my in-person training, I had 25 strangers giving me feedback and they all told me that I was a teacher. They had no reason to lie to me, so why should I lie to myself? All I have to do is trust my gut and follow the lesson plans and I'll be good. I'm doing what I love and I love what I'm doing (so far, anyways!), which is a recipe for success. And the thing that I keep thinking is: "How cool is this that I get paid to read with other people and help them love what I love?!?"

It's going to be a good summer