It's a learning process alright!

The past two days have been the first days I was teaching actual lessons. At this point in my internship I have only taken over the first two periods of the day (7th grade). I have discovered SO many things already though! For instance, at the University I would have my teachers and Ta's tell me, "That activity is only going to take the kids 10 minutes and you're trying to give them 20 to get it done." Actually, I hate to say it but I don't think they were right on this one. It takes middle schoolers forever to do anything! Especially in a group work setting where they have to interact with each other will they quickly get off task. The activity that I had planned for one day has now turned into a three day activity (they are finishing it tomorrow come hell or high water). On the other hand, I also found out that you don't need to put too much popcorn in a dry air corn popper at once, it might almost blow up on you. And I have had to learn really quick how to deal with situations like your corn popper almost blowing up and the rest of the class not getting to finish an activity. But on a more positive note I will say this: I am proud of the way I've been handling all of my situations and I can tell that in the last few short months I  have changed drastically in my ability to 'roll with the punches'. Last semester (especially lab 9 in the high school), if some of these things had happened to me I would cry all the way home (again). But now I am taking it all in stride and I know it's ok to make mistakes. It's ok that I'm not the best teacher in the entire world. It's ok that my one day activity is going on it's third day. It's ok that my first period class is my guinea pigs. Even though it seems that nothing has gone right yet I'm still so excited for the weeks to come, so excited to move into more challenging content. These kids are awesome and I can already tell I'm not going to want to leave in a few short months. Let's just hope the weeks start going a little smoother.