ECS field Blog: Nov. 1

This one was kind of interesting, as I taught my first real lesson this semester, but I'll start from the top.

It's always remarkable to me, how poor of a sleep I get before these field days. Maybe it's nerves, or like, adjusting to being up late on the weekends, but it seems like I always get a crummy sleep, even though I get to bed early and try to wind down appropriately. Honestly, though, it probably just feels like I got a poor sleep. Chances are I woke up like, maybe twice during the night, and then in the morning: "Whadda night. I didn't catch a wink of sleep. What am I doing getting up at this hour anyways? Has the world gone mad?" and so on...

Once again, I arrived at the school, yakked it up with the receptionist a bit. It's kind of funny, because whenever someone is friendly, I feel compelled to chat with them, but worry about talking their ear off. She seems the same, so each of our encounters is marked with me slowly backing towards the door while maintaining full conversation.

Gym was kind of the same old same old again. Kids played four corners soccer. Not a bad game.

When we came back after Recess my ECS partner started his lesson. It was on the food guide and the food groups and what have you. The lesson went reasonably well, but the kids got pretty chatty throughout, which didn't bug him at first, but like, it can hit a pretty rank pitch pretty quickly. Near the end, I saw some kid having a swordfight with himself, using two pairs of scissors.

My lesson was on the long-gun registry and the debate surrounding it. The big idea was to have kids rattle off what they knew about the registry, the pros, the cons, and in the end to come up with an informed opinion of their own. Then, they'd back that opinion up in a sort of classroom debate. I only had a half an hour, so like...

this is kind of a random interjection, but I think I just drank a glass of water that was sitting on the table all night. Gross.

At any rate, I only had a half an hour, so I got through the pros, and a few of the cons, which is about what I had planned. The kids have the material all laid out on a handout I had prepared, so picking it up next week won't be too hard. It was kind of funny, as some kids were forming some pretty good pros and cons, but like, sometimes, they had trouble articulating them. Like, A kid would put up his or her hand, start something off, and I could see where they were going, but halfway through they'd say "Uhh, nevermind" or "Uhh, I forgot." Usually, another kid would fill in the rest. The kids weren't such a zoo for me, because the teacher, before I spoke, kind of gave them all hell for acting up earlier.

But yeah, it was pretty right on, and I'm going to continue next week.