The last Monday and Tuesday went by very smoothly. By this point I'm comfortable with the school schedule and can adapt to changes in the classroom especially with the help of Tanya who I worked with throughout each day. Monday's are always somewhat of a hard adjustment after traveling over the weekend and it's nice that there's a TA and a teacher in the classroom because whenever one of the three of us needs to take a break or a breather it's possible. This is different from my experience student teaching in first grade where the teacher was on her own except the one day a week I was able to come.
Wednesday we didn't attend school to see the Pope's public mass in St. Peter's square. Even though we weren't at school, I was able to relate this experience to the children. As they are attending a Catholic school and I'm Jewish, I wondered how the children would react at the public mass. It was interesting seeing all the different Catholic schools that did attend the mass in large groups. I am going to investigate religion in school further for my inquiry project.
Thursday was such a bittersweet day. I was excited to see the kids again but I knew it was going to be my last time seeing these kids probably forever. As soon as I got to school I found out my teacher broke two of her toes during karate, and she wouldn't be back for the rest of the year. My TA Tanya was taking over the class and a sub would come into the classroom to take over her role. I felt so bad, and I was so upset I couldn't say bye. Tanya and I made a game plan in the morning as to what we needed to do that day. We had singing practice with the other kindergarten class for the kindergarten graduation and I videotaped a few of the songs since I won't get to see the graduation.
The 4th grade was putting on their big singing and dancing performance and all elementary school grades got to go. They put the kindergartners on the floor in front which wasn't the best idea. They are so wiggly and can't sit still and this performance was an hour and half. We took them out early to recess and left the performance because it was becoming so difficult to control them. After recess we had library and PE then came back for lunch. The day was flying by. After lunch I had recess duty so I was outside with them. The kids are just so clever. One of the kids loves airplanes and his mom used to be a flight attendant so he was pretending I was on Egyptian Air flight 719. He had all these details in his head and then the plane caught on fire but it was okay because he was a firefighter. One of the girls kept braiding my hair and playing with me, she's been one of the students that seems to be the most attached to me, and she kind of reminds me of myself at that age. We did one last animal walk back to class where we acted out lion, T-Rex, and tiger. I've used this strategy to try and get them to move through the hallways quickly and to be less distracted by their surroundings.
We had our math workshop which I was in charge of. We were learning about 3D shapes so I read them a book about shapes and spotting them in everyday life. Then we had 3 stations, one with a scavenger hunt in the room finding cones, spheres, cubes, and pyramids. The other table had a worksheet where they had to find as many shapes as they could, then the table I was running had a bag with the 3D shapes in them and they had to reach in and feel one then describe it to the rest of the table and we had to guess what it was. It was a great way to end the day on top of my special snack for the class! I brought in ice cream sandwiches for the kids to eat and we also had lemonade from the lemonade sale EC 1 was running. Ms. Tanya had the class toast to me and thank me for helping in the class. They all said, "cin cin!" Which is how you say cheers in Italy. Then all the kids brought me these handmade cards they made in class. There were drawings on all of them, then inside was a drawing of me with the child and a little note. I started getting teary-eyed it was so sweet. One boy drew a picture of himself with huge muscles and me holding guns. Guns and carabinieri are some of the kids favorite games, no matter how many times the teachers try to reprimand them for portraying violence in school.
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