I still didn’t feel great this morning and could have used another couple of hours of rest.  Too bad I had to teach today.

On this rainy day, I would be teaching Art in the middle school.  I was a little apprehensive about teaching middle school because the kids are so immature.  What I discovered though is that, while they are indeed squirrely, they are also easily intimidated.  Just my mere presence caused the kids to quiet down.  That would never happen at the High School!  My wife tells me that it’s because I’m a male teacher and they aren’t used to male teachers at the elementary level.  The kids are still (mostly) little, and I’m so much bigger!  The Art class was a breeze and all the kids were great.  I actually enjoyed this more than a lot of my High School experience so far.  I could actually teach at the middle school level!

I also observed a history teacher today as part of an assignment for class.  I was really impressed by the teacher’s control of the classroom and in how he taught this class of English Language Learners (kids who just came to America with only some English speaking ability).  He had kids in there who knew very little English, and only a few who were proficient.  Most were somewhere in the lower middle.  He handled the class deftly and helped each reader out as they read aloud.  He also arranged the tables based on reading ability, common primary language, and by sex.  The girls are so much more mature than the boys at this age, so mixing the two doesn’t work according to him.  Tables with a common primary language help the tables during discussions.  They can more quickly come up with a consensus on what the correct English response should be.  The primary language ability enhances their understanding of their secondary language: English.

At the end of the day, there was an assembly where we watched a 30 minute play (done by the theater students) on the dangers of drugs.  It was actually a pretty good script, though the acting was hit or miss.  The audience was so immature, bordering on rude, but then this is middle school.