Thursday and Friday

Thursday and Friday can easily be epitomized by one single world: portfolios. Every year in the lower school, the kids have the opportunity to make and take home portfolios which include nearly everything they did all year. They get to cut and paste and decorate and put little captions to explain what exactly they learned in the second grade. Well, due to school ending a little earlier, and just getting a little behind, my second grade class never quite started them. So I spent all of Thursday and Friday in the hallway putting together the portfolios for them. It is actually incredible to see how much work the kids have accomplished in the last nine months, they are all really proud of themselves. I got a small break when my mom and sister stopped by to meet the kids. My class loved getting to meet them because sometimes I think that students don't think that their teachers are real people who live normal lives with normal families, so they were pretty intrigued by that. The kids were in the classroom basically all day until the afternoon when they had their last swim class (which they were all thrilled about). Because of a small mix up and a little disorganization, I only got through 3 portfolios on Thursday, which meant Friday I would be working all day on them. I turned out that it was easier to just not have the kids with me while making the portfolios, and just letting them look at them once they were finished. They were pretty bummed out but it made my job quite a bit easier. Luckily they had three or four specials Friday, so they were barely in the classroom anyway. I finally finished ten more portfolios on Friday, which means I only have 4 more to complete next week. I'm truly enjoying being a teacher although I never realized quite how much extra work and "homework" it entailed. The teacher that I am working with explained that a teacher always has homework, and that I have realized is very true.