Week 1 complete...so begins another week!

I survived the first week! By the end of the week, I felt like it had been much longer than 5 days. After spending 7 hours a day with the same 17 kids, you get to know them pretty quickly and you become very familiar with some of their names when you say them 20 times within an hour. We've got a really great class full of students who seem to really want to learn.
On Thursday I had my UT class block, where I meet with my professors and other UT interns for the actual grad class part. I definitely would have rather been in the school than going over all the projects and things that I will be doing over the next year. I enjoy spending time with the other interns and it was great catching up with the ones that I had not seen over the summer. Although our teachers try not to overwhelm us with a ton of stuff to do, they still manage to stress me out! No more time to sit around after school and watch tv.
Today, my mentor teacher was out for the morning, so with a substitute at my side, I led the class through their morning reading stuff. I taught them about the letters m, n, and a during our phonics instruction. I had my first experiences with the activeboard in our classroom. It'll take practice to get used to writing on that. I read them a story and we talked about what it means to be special. It was a good experience actually being in charge of the classroom; it definitely required me to go out of my comfort zone. And I got a little sick of hearing my own voice! I guess that's something you get used to as you continue to teach. I had some moments where my ideas on how to involve the class faltered and I had to quickly come up with a new plan. Such as playing charades with things we like to do...yeah 1st graders can't really act! It was nice to have my mentor teacher come back for the afternoon part of the day! I would be a lot more tired now if I had done the whole day by myself. Ok well I gotta go work on grad school stuff now! boo!