Me, teacher!

This afternoon my supervisor let me teach her transitional English class. These five students are in there because they need extra help with English skills, are unable to be in a regular ed. English class, or whatever. They have been working on writing skills and I have been itching to get my hands on these kids. All year I have been correcting their papers and monitoring their progress, and I really wanted to work with them in person.

Today was the day. She gave me a grand introduction.

"Today we have a special guest, kids. She is a professional writer, and she's here to work with you on your Writing Bugs."

When I went to the front of the class, one kid's face fell. "It's just Jade?!" he said, clearly very disappointed. I will get him back tomorrow...

I have no desire whatsoever to go back to college to be a teacher, but it was seriously fun. It was also a little frustrating because they really didn't seem to care a lot, even though I gave a big lecture on why writing skills are important even if they are not going to be writers. I tried to get them to edit their own paragraphs, checking for punctuation problems, spelling, etc. Nobody moved. I went around to each kid and edited their paper, explaining as I went along. I went over the things they do well and things they need to work on (such as stopping that sentence...put a freaking period there and be done with it!).

It was fun anyway, even though I know that most of these kids are never going to do much better than they do right now, whether they care or not. At least I felt I was helping a little bit, and it is something that I feel is very important.

I hope she lets me do this again!