Visiting Another School

I was informed a little while ago that come May, I would have to go to another school to observe and take notes on another Prepatoria teacher, and that someone would be coming to observe me as well. I sort of forgot about it, but last week I found out that was happening this week.

So, today was the day that I went to another school to observe. The name of the school is Trinity Christian School, and what was strange to me is that the school only has about half as many students as Eagle's, but over twice as many grade levels. They go all the way from Kinder (preschool) to 7th grade (high school). Most of their grade levels only have 1-3 students, and some don't have any.

It's a very small school operating out of a converted house, and they put at least 3 grade levels in each class. I can't imagine how difficult that would be to have to teach different things to different kids that are all in the same class, but that's the way they do it there. It was a cute and very nice little school, though.

There were 10 kids in the class, but only 2 or 3 of them were in Preparatoria. They started by singing a number of songs together by watching these videos the teacher played on her computer. They were all simple kid's songs with shapes, letters, numbers, and colors, and the kids knew all the words. Despite us watching like 8 of these little videos in a row, the kids were still attentive and singing along even at the end.

Then, they were separated by age and sat at different tables and were given counting worksheets to complete. They did so in near silence. A couple of the boys were talking, and the teacher immediately gave a soft warning to be quiet, and they were quiet after that.

It was incredible. And now I'm scared for what tomorrow will bring. Tomorrow, they're coming to my class to watch me teach. Not only are my kids already a little bit crazier than what I saw there, but the teachers are coming after recess, when they're at their worst.

Both Tammy and I have had talks with them about what's going to happen tomorrow that they need to listen and be quiet and do their work and so on, but we'll see what tomorrow brings. I just hope that they'll be shy having strangers in the room and want to be extra good to show off.

We're also doing things a little bit differently tomorrow which will hopefully keep their attention better than usual, so that should also help. We have a few worksheets for them to color and work on, which will also help keep them busy. It's usually when they're finished and I'm waiting on a few kids to finish that the rest start to go a little crazy.

So, yeah. In other news, I'm now 23 days away from being back in the States, so it's coming up fast. I'm excited, but also keeping focused in the here and now so I don't slack off at the end of the school year. We have exams coming up in just a couple of weeks, and I'm already through the planning part of that. I now just have to get the actual exams made up and then get them printed. I'm also going to be giving an oral exam next week, which should be interesting.