Again

I am exhausted. I fell asleep early again, but this time I get why. I walked about 25 minutes between buses, and then another 10 minutes to my house. Exercise? check, crashing on my bed ? check. I got to talk to Alex a bit this morning, so it was a good day.

This is how the days seem to play out at my job:

Morning

10am: Stretch

10:10am: Have the kids read/say the date

10:20am: Ask them to individually say the alphabet, the 5, 10 or 20 times tables and count in Spanish

10:30am - 11am: Separate the classes, read to them or teach Math/English/Science

11am - 11:30am: Lunch is served, help younger kids eat

11:30am - 12pm: Clean up the dishes, sweep, set up their cots to sleep

Afternoon

12pm - 3pm: Kids sleep, or pretend to sleep, and one in particular chews on their shoes no matter what you do. Meanwhile I write lesson books and take a lunch break.

After school

3pm - 3:10pm: Wake the kids, put away the cots

3:10pm - 3:30pm: Snack time

3:30pm - 4pm: Clean up

4pm - 5pm: Read to them, have them color, give them an exercise

5pm-6pm: Free play, parents come to pick up their kids

6pm: Take out the trash and leave

Since I work with the older kids, I want to come up with better ways to teach them ... but this is my first week so I'm just assessing the place, the owner, my co-worker, the job risk vs reward, the kids' skill levels and my commute. HP has some good exercises on the site, I'm reading about the Waldorf method, and going through an old book from primary school to remind me of a child's interests. In terms of discipline, I just tell them to sit/stand and think about what they did wrong but I'm looking for better ways. And I'm also looking for ways to address their off-hand comments about their family life ("we cant have a dog because we live in a basement and I don't know my father's number") and stories (one child's stories always involve an evil witch, or a brutal murder).

So i'm going back to bed, its 4:30am... still figuring out this commute.

A demain!