Education is Never Ending

Today was my first day back at the school volunteering and I feel like I was more involved in the teaching aspect and more confident in my authority with the students than during my two week placement. I worked especially with the girl that has been mentioned in all my other posts (I say "all my other" but there has only been two...haha). I can't keep calling her "the girl" so will instead name her Julia, after one of the less strangely named characters from Mansfield Park, which I am currently reading.

Julia worked well today for the most part though there were a few times where I had to give her much more prodding than most students would need. More than once she wanted to do things her way, but luckily I had a general plan in mind of what order I wanted her to do things and so when she complained I was able to stay firm in my plan. There are so many things she needs to learn, she is no where near the level she should be at. She can do simple addition and subtraction, but stumbles over reading, and her writing an original sentence... She just does not have the ability to put thoughts to paper and it makes me so sad.

By the end of my three hours spent at the school with her I was completely exhausted. She spent the last half hour or so trying to form the mirror image of a pattern using blocks and just could not understand the concept no matter how many different ways I tried to explain it to her. It was so frustrating that she just could not catch on.

In other news, I recently received an e-mail through the University asking for teacher candidate volunteers for a three day camp. Having been a Girl Guide for several years I developed a great love of camping and have always wanted to be a camp counselor or something of that kind. I really hope I'll be able to participate and have already sent my request to have more information to which the organizer replied that he needed my phone number so that I could be contacted. Now I just have to wait for the phone call. I'm a little nervous because I'm not sure if it will be some kind of phone interview that I should be preparing for...

In any case, I'm excited and feeling a little more like a teacher today than I did yesterday.