So, it's just a day away from Thanksgiving YAY! and I'm back home in Katy to celebrate with my dad, my brother and our next door neighbors. During this time I'll also being seeing and catching up with friends since I won't be back in Katy for quite some time (I'm going to China for winter break). As usual, before I made it back home, I was burdened with a thousand academic tasks to finish up...or rather it was just one 12 page paper that I apparently really didn't want to write. Funny thing is that the paper was me analyzing the film Buffy the Vampire Slayer, so it should have been both fun and interesting, but it wasn't. That is all.
Woo life is crazy right now! Which is why I haven't had to time to write, but now that things are starting to calm down, I can start sharing. For this post I'll tell you all about my internship as a dance assistant at a charter school in northeast DC. The school is an inner-city school filled with students that come from a less than great part of town. So, my job as an "arts" teacher is considered outreach.
On Monday mornings and all day Wednesday, I help assist the dance teacher at this school in teaching her K-8th grade dance classes. When I first began, I was totally overwhelmed by the students. Being the youngest child who has never babysat before, I was at a total loss at how to handle these little children. I have several friends who have experience working with kids and got some tips from them, but really the only way to get through a situation like this is trial and error, sink or swim. I'm happy to say that after almost three months, I finally feel capable of running a class on my own. I've learned that its never easy and even great teachers can't always have a great class, therefore its a constant challenge to both keep up my energy as a teacher as well as keep my students in line.
One of my favorite things about this internship is feeling so adult and like a leader, especially when I reprimand my students...its actually really hilarious, I wish there was a video I could see of me doing that haha. I also love that I get to know so many students and they know me and they seem happy to see me everyday we have class together. I definitely have my favorite students and its interesting because its not always the best students in the class that I like. I have a soft spot in my heart for the troublemakers because they get so much negative attention from the other teachers; I really try to reach out to them and I think a few have come to really respond to me. It isn't always perfect, but still I think its worth putting in the effort. Actually, this plays into one of my biggest qualms about the job. After all these weeks, I know many students by name, but unfortunately there are many that I don't know and its sad to say that they tend to be those in the middle of the pack. Not the best or the worst, but just good kids who get by. Its disappointing that all the teachers' attentions are solely focused on the best and worst kids and so many fly under our radar.
Despite everything though, I truly love this job. Its been a great experience and I've learned so much. However, I've also learned that as much as I enjoy teaching dance, I'm not suited to teaching young children long term. Given the nature of how young kids must be taught, I feel that elementary teachers need to have more of a passion for teaching than for the specific subject that they teach. My main love is dance and teaching is secondary and given the nature of our dance classes, I'm not able to share my passion with the kids in class. Instead, I have to focus the majority of my energy on disciplining. Therefore, if and when I do end up teaching long term in the future, it'll have to be to older students, at least high school if not college age and older.
Well, that's been just one part of my life this semester. Perhaps I'll keep up with the internship next semester, but we'll have to see how free my schedule ends up being. Lastly, before I end this post, I want to share with you a great article that I recently read. Also on the topic of education, this article details the state of sex education in schools today. Doesn't sound that interesting, but I promise it is! This article brings up a lot of interesting points and I definitely agree and wish that such a sex program had been offered to me in high school. I think what I did receive led me to have a very skewed perception of sex and since college, I've totally rethought the issue and I think I'm a smarter, more cognizant person on the subject now as a result. So enjoy the article Teaching Good Sex and let me know your thoughts!
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