I was in the school volunteering, which is where I truly enjoy being. I go and help this one teacher at the local school in the afternoon and I really get a kick out of it. I normally assist with her reading group and she is a really fun teacher and good with the kids. Well, yesterday, while she was testing and she sent me and the remainder of her reading group into the next classroom, so she could test the children individually. I thought, okay why not? The other teacher claimed that she would need my help, and I was glad to assist her.
When I entered the room of twenty two second graders, you could have heard a pin drop. It was so strange to me that I leaned over and whispered to her "have you put corks in them or something?" Well, needless to say she did not find this comment amusing. Then she proceeded to play a getting to know you memory game with each person saying their name and something that we could associate with them. I am really not sure if she did this so the kids would know each other, or so she would know everyone's name. This process took about 15 minutes. Then she proceeded to pass out workbooks and have each child look through them. Then she collected all the workbooks again telling the students that they would work on them tomorrow, there was no time for them today. She then proceeded to pass out some hard covered reading books. She reviewed the Table of Contents with them, and then had them turn to section and called on the first person to read. She had supplied me with a reading book, so I took a seat at a desk and had my book open. Needless to say, this whole process was getting a bit long and drawn out for me, so I began to look for the clock which I located behind her desk, and could only see the hour hand on. No minute hand visible. I began to search visually around the room for a clock I could actually see. When all of a sudden she called on ME to read! A classroom of 22 kids and she called on me to read because I wasn't paying any attention and she knew it! Well, needless to say, I was still kind of in a haze about the situation and as I began to read, I messed up a word in the second sentence and went back and corrected my mistake and continued reading. When I finished she says to the class, "Now notice class that she misread a word in sentence number 2, but she went back and corrected herself. This shows that she is a good reader because she went back and corrected her mistake."
Needless to say, I thought I would die. I could not believe that she would not give me anything to help with, and then on top of that called on me to read, because I was drifting off into la, la land! Well, obviously when I returned to the other classroom, I told the teacher I am normally with, to please never send me to that classroom again. She laughed and said that the kids would at least be glad when they got her back.
Posted on Tuesday, April 15, 2008 8:37 PM by Carol Ann