I feel like every week that I post my reflection, I want to start it off with “This was a great week at Grady Brown!” I resisted this time, because I think I have said it at the beginning of almost every post so far. So there ya go, it was a really good week. For some reason it felt like a really long week, though. I think there were a few reasons for that. I’m finding that now that I’m teaching most subjects, I have so much more planning and preparing to do than before, so I’m having to stay at school much later than I did in the beginning.
Another reason why this week maybe felt long was because of what happened one day…One day this week (Wednesday) was a 2 hour delay because of snow. It was supposed to be an Early Release Day. Orange County ended up canceling the early dismissal because of the 2 hr delay. There was a mix up with the after school program that our school usually provides, so there ended up being no after school care, even though the parents were told that morning when dropping their children off that there would be after school. We had to call the parents of students who usually go to after school and inform them that their children would have to be picked up at 2:20. There was one parent who works at a fast food restaurant all the way in Raleigh who just couldn’t possibly make it by 2:20. She had already been penalized for going into school late that morning, because of the 2 hour delay, and wasn’t scheduled to leave until 5 pm that day. My teacher and I offered to keep her child in our classroom with us for the afternoon, since there was really no other option. It ended up being a really fun afternoon, I made a McDonald’s run for McFlurries and our student helped me put up things on the wall and got to practice on a new math website we showed her. Her mom didn’t get there until 6 o’clock so the day felt really long, but it was rewarding to know that we helped a parent who otherwise would have had to leave her job and face serious ramifications for it. It was worth it to stay the extra hour, and I feel like I also made a connection with that student that I’ve seen have positive impacts from when I’m teaching in our classroom.
Other than that, I’m still loving student teaching! Although I’m excited to have it under my belt and know that I’m ready to be a real teacher on that glorious day of April 28, I’m also realizing how sad it’s going to be to leave this amazing group of students and colleagues. It will be a bittersweet day for sure. As for now, I’m just getting through each week day by day, and teaching these students everything I can.
