Ok, so maybe I overreacted a little yesterday... haha... teaching IS the right path for me :)

I had such a good day today. Everything went so smoothly... well almost everything :P This experience is really going to be an awesome learning curve. I've already learnt so much about myself, about the children, about staff and most importantly, about teaching.

I've learnt that when I find something challenging... I give a whole lot of excuses to try and take the easy way out. I don't persist, I don't motivate myself to keep going, I just give up. And that's really bad. The only way I'll continue is if I'm forced to. I've had a few situations like that already but today's experience made me want to change.

After the day from hell, I had no choice but to go back and try again. No matter how much I complained to al and cam, or how much I thought about wanting to quit, or that I didn't want to be a teacher anymore... I was forced to go back the next day and face my fears of failing again. And I didn't know it last night, but it was a good thing. No, a GREAT thing.

So knowing that I had to go back again, I needed to prepare myself better. I had to think of different strategies that would work with these children, now that I had spent a day with them. Observations are soooo important in planning. Its the foundation for how your program will run. The kinder has a pet rat. Yes. A rat. lolz. Sounds gross, but it's the cutest thing. And the children love her. Her name is Sparkles... not that she sparkles on anything hehe. So anyways, I was observing how the children were carrying her around yesterday and loving it. So I thought for one of the activities I could do with them would be to make 'rat friends' out of paper. It was a really simple activity but the children LOVED it! Occupied them for a good 20mins or so. I was so happy.

And the day just got better, with one little hiccup. Even though the children were listening to me better, there was one little boy (who wasn't in my group yesterday) who decided to test me.He threw a tantrum because I wouldn't let him play with the trains anymore. But I had a very good reason for it. Did you know that children that are 4 years old know how to swear?! I was sooooo shocked. He pulled out the F word while telling off another child who wanted to play with the trains too. I couldn't believe my ears when I heard it! I was soooo angry at him. He didn't think my reasoning was valid hence he threw a tantrum. He was kicking me and screaming/crying at the top of his lungs. In such a situation, you just ignore them and let them scream. They'll get tired after a while and calm themselves down. So that's what I did. And it worked. He came looking for me after a while, still sobbing, saying that he wanted to do a painting. So the situation had a good outcome. And I think I handled it pretty well.

I also changed my routine a bit. Yesterday I felt that we stayed inside too long and the children were getting restless. They needed to just go outside and burn off that excess energy. So today I took them outside a bit earlier and let them run loose. It worked much better I thought. So that's what I'll do tomorrow too.

YAY! I'm so proud of myself. I was able to change my teaching strategies and come up with new ideas to suit the children. Which is what teaching is all about. And my efforts paid off. :) So being forced into a situation where I have to reevaluate myself and my thinking was something I needed. I may not have been so open at the beginning, but I now know, persistence beats resistance!

my thoughts @ 11:52 PM

_________