Day 22 at St. Florence: The End

and so ends my official tenure as student teacher at St. Florence. it was awesome.

little kids in grade 1 are arguably the best age for kids to be. they know how to pee and poo and wipe on their own, they say really cute things, they still look really cute and they hug you and hold your hand just to say hello. by now they know how to read and write the most common words, so they laugh at your jokes for the right reasons. their personalities are starting to flesh out but they're not at the stage of grudges and cut-eyes and backstabbery that plagues grade 5 and up. even when they're hurt and crying they can be cheered up with a hug and a funny noise or face. the best part about teaching grade 1 students is seeing how they've improved from the beginning of the year. the fruits of the teacher's labour are clearly evident in spelling tests and carpet-time questions.

we had a brief 8-word spelling test today, on less tricky words than last time because these could be sounded out (rich, chest, shed, club, land, ring, etc). i was given the task of marking while the teacher carried on with the next lesson. i thought checking eight words per student was a little bit too easy, so i set up a chart with eight boxes per student to track which words they had the most trouble with. then i totalled the scores and calculated an average. there are no calculators in a grade 1 classroom, so i had to do it manually for 20 students. to make it easier for myself, i plotted the marks in a histogram first (1 zero, 2 threes, 2 fives, 4 sixes, 4 sevens and 7 perfects). then i dotted all the boxes that indicated errors with a red marker so they'd stand out. most kids had trouble getting 'club' correct on account of mucking up their 'b' and 'd'. it was so nerdy; i wish i had taken a photograph of it.

can you tell i was playing with Excel the other day, tallying my university marks? i finished with a cumulative grade point average of pi (rounded to two decimal places) by the way. i was quite pleased since i had been on 2.9ish for the longest time. and then i found out i missed out on a Distinction by 0.06 and i felt like a loser; it was great.

anyway, there was a lot of hugging and hand holding and begging today from kids asking me not to leave; i already told them i would be in tomorrow. and now i will likely be in every monday, wednesday and friday for June as well (because i have no life and i like the attention they give me and because the teachers suckered me into it). now that i'm technically off the clock, i can be a bit more bold in building relationships with the kids and staff and subtly ministering to them. i should bring a camera some time.