Today was my last day in Kristen's class for a while, so I was glad to have extra time to just watch the class and reflect on what I had done to help Kristen in any way. There are so many things that a teacher needs to do and definitely doesn't have enough time for, so when I was in the class, I did a lot of grading for Kristen. Spelling tests and history assignments mostly, but it was cool to see what they had written and to learn, well it was more like remember, what they were learning. I was also able to help prepare a poster as an example for them for their explorer posters, and I was able to cut a load of yarn into pieces and tie them together for cat's cradle.
Today wasn't a super busy day, especially since they are getting ready for fall break. I helped grade some more papers on European explorers, and I was able to stay long enough to listen to their math assignments. They were dividing today, which took me back less than 24 hours to my own math class. Yesterday we were learning the same things, how to divide, what the easiest way was to divide, but we were learning how to teach it. It's nice to be past the point where I was learning what division was all about. They had a problem up on the board that said, is 9585 divisible by 9?, so for fun, I pulled out a piece of paper and did the problem using the partial product method (which I just learned yesterday but should have learned 10 years ago), and found out for myself that 9585 is indeed divisible by 9. For those of you that are curious, 9585 divided by 9 is 1065.
I know that in comparison to the time I am not there, I didn't even contribute a fraction of the time that Kristen or any teacher would spend in a year, or a month, a week, or even a day on grading papers, helping students with questions, etc. I feel overwhelmed when I think about the amount of time that a teacher puts in to her job, but then I remember that I won't be in school full time with a part time job as well as being a teacher :)
I just want to thank Kristen and her kids for being so nice for letting me join in their class if only for a little while, and for giving me a glimpse into what I hope to be doing as a permanent career in the future. It's been fun to spend time doing this, and I'm excited to see what the younger grades are like. Oh, and for Kristen's kids:
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