Service Hours

Today I went to First Avenue to complete my service hours. I was assigned to a second grade classroom, where the teacher was absent so they needed extra help. There was a substitute teacher and an aid, and both were sick. Neither of them were able to speak so I helped a lot during the day. The sub pulled out worksheets and I pretty much taught with them the entire day. There was not much to go by, so I had to keep the kids occupied with about five worksheets for the day. I found a way to stretch out each assignment by adding to them and making them more exciting for the kids so they wouldn't realize that they were actually doing more "Busy" work. There was one sheet that involved finding how many words could be made out of 'hippopotamus,' so we made a game that the first five students to make real words would get a prize. It actually took longer than I thought because a lot of students were using words like Potamus, and some used their vocabulary words like Pioneers, which I thought was pretty funny but I had to explain the directions more than once. Another worksheet involved telling time, so I allowed one student at a time come up to the board to draw the time for everyone to see. There were nine questions and 23 students and a lot of time to spare, so I made up question so that every student was able to participate. The students were pretty well behaved, considering they were being taught by a complete stranger. Something I noticed was the the aid, who was in charge of one student, spent a lot of time on her cell phone and in the back of the room on the computer. She was doing work some of the time, and spoke up if the students were acting up, but otherwise I think she was taking the chance to rest her voice and relax while I was teaching. I don't want to say she was being lazy because she was doing some work. At the end of the day about half the class were dismissed to the after school program. I stayed in the cafeteria with a group of forth graders and helped them with their homework. One girl in the group didn't have any homework so I gave her a few of the worksheets that I took from the classroom I taught in. For about the last hour of the program the weather was getting worse and many students were gone, so the remaining students went from the cafeteria to the auditorium where some students were rehearsing for their winter concert. At the end of the day everyone was dismissed in an organized manner, making sure everyone was picked up by the right person and on time.