First day of school

Was a success! My first class was exhausting, though; a class of middle school boys and two troublemakers makes for a rough first class ever, but all in all, I think it's going to go well. My second class (only five kids showed up, and they were a bit older) went as smoothly as I could have dreamed. Part of that was the smaller size, part was that I could gauge their progress in the curriculum from the morning class. I was flying completely blind in the first one!

I know I need to keep my expectations reasonable... I'm only teaching these kids for three months, after all, but I have high hopes. They know more than I had anticipated, and the younger kids are very sharp. One kept telling me to stop explaining things in Spanish! It's nice to know that they want to be there, want a challenge. They just need to learn a little discipline :)

I don't know how St. Mary's drilled that into us so thoroughly; even our middle school classrooms - many elementary classes, too! - were well-oiled machines. Most of us would get frustrated when class time wasn't perfectly efficient or when someone caused disruptions. Pretty amazing. At times, I think that was for the worse, as nice as it sounds right now. Mom and I talked about the uniformity created by that extent of discipline, at least for very young children. Little kids need room for creativity and play! We'll see how well I can balance that dichotomy at the close of these three months.