I am not a dinamicas teacher

Today I was observing one of the segundo sectiones (equivalent of 10th or 11th grade) and had a pretty good time. Because the math teacher wasn´t around, I kind of took over for that period. But before I get into all the wonderful games we played, let´s start at the beginning. If you refer back to previous posts, you know my lame self messed up my ankle playing basketball. Two months later, it is still messed up, ocassional bruising here and there. I tried doing my exercises with the band, taking Ibuprofen, and putting my legs up on the wall as a read in my room. Needless to say, nothings really working. I have to juggle the pain of my ankle with that of my stomach (I´ve felt like throwing up on and off for about 3 weeks). Anyway, back to the story, this morning before heading down the block to school, I put on my ankle brace, thought it looked silly through my sandals and took it off. I get to the school, shake hands with the janitor, and proceed to roll my other ankle, tripping in front of the whole student body. Applause, please. So I started off with a bang. Two periods later in English class, the teacher asked me to bring my desk over so she could practice her English with me. I had to lift my desk through a maze of little bodies, suddenly realizing that I still had all my books and papers on the desk and they fell crashing to the ground. Today was my clumsy day. But I recovered, folks. I bounced back! I had the students first do an icebreaker where we (the class) are all going on a picnic; you say your name and the item you will bring to the picnic. I brought an arco iris (who brings a rainbow to a picnic? me, baby, me). So the students enjoyed that. Later on we did Simon Says and they got a kick out of it. Then (stealing this idea from my compañera Maggie) turned Simon Says into a lesson (moral of the story type stuff), because during the game I had them doing questionable things such as gently pull another student´s hair and smell their own armpits. They did it so I asked them how they felt when they had to do things that they may have not really wanted to do. Have they ever felt pressured to do things they didn´t want to? Peer pressure, etc. So they were all really attentive and were into. That was the highlight of my day. Later we played, a balloon game which focuses on good communication and teamwork. Lastly, during art, the teacher was simply grading their work and the rest of the class was talking so I said to myself, Anna, put these children´s minds to work. Yes, I said it, just like that. I´m a nerd. We played pictionary, getting them to use some of those drawing abilities as well as just getting some of the shy students to get up to the board and draw. A lot of the girls told me,¨I can´t draw that.¨Of course you can. Then I´d chant, si se puede, si se puede. Also I made all the students give a round of applause to a kid named Roger for coming up to the board, not being the best drawer but not being afraid to try. I think he felt good after that. As he should. Later on in the day a student told me he liked the way I was because I seemed happy. That made me feel all warm inside. So that was my day. There´s supposed to be an awards ceremony of some type for the teachers in this district. I want to go to it but it looks like its going to rain and I can´t be out too late (past 6!). Too dangerous.

Besitos to all.