Life with employment

I'm fondly referring to my first week of work as The Week of Worry. It was a week of "in-service" for the elementary school teachers and, for me, a time to hear people talk about all the translating I would be doing, how I would be the go-to resource for parents who don't speak English, the problems I would be expected to solve, etc. etc. By the time Thursday's open house rolled around, I was terrified. I was the only Spanish speaking resource in a building of almost 500 kids with a Hispanic population making up half of the school. I was expecting to be swamped and incapable.

I ended up making it through the evening with ease, and the school hired another employee in the same position I have, so I now have someone to bounce ideas off of, joke around with and share the workload with.

Weeks two and three were the honeymoon phase of my relationship with this new job. I hardly struggled at all when working with students in the classroom, and they all (for the most part) paid attention and followed directions. It seemed that nothing could go wrong.

And then it did.

I was asked to work with a student who needed help with her alphabet. I was expecting her to be at grade level, so I thought it was a behavior issue - that she didn't like me and didn't want to work with me for whatever reason. As it turns out, that wasn't the case. She is quite far behind. But after working with her that first day, I was on the verge of tears. Everything that day became so much more difficult.

Now that I'm on the other side of that situation and have found some great resources and people to go to with issues like that, I'm again seeing how many great things there are about my job. The kiddos are getting to know me now, and I get all kinds of hugs every day. They wave at me when I come in or leave their classrooms or see them in the hallways. They tell me I look pretty, that I look like Cinderella or Princess Jasmine, that they like my makeup. They get excited to tell me about their days. In math class today, one student told me how tired he was and how he wanted to quit working, but he was going to keep on working. And he did.

I've learned a new way to teach the alphabet, and I've learned how much patience teachers have to have. It's far and beyond anything I ever thought.

But I just couldn't help from grinning ear to ear when I overheard a student I work with tell his teacher "I LOVE school!" as he was leaving today. That alone makes me ready to be back at work again on Tuesday :)