Skip to main content

21 Things I Learned from Teaching Kindergarten

I have been teaching Kindergarten for the last month. I decided I needed to write down some of the things that I learned during this time. Enjoy!

1. Any job that involves handing out snacks twice a day is the job for me!
2. If you have a runny nose, you are not sick enough to miss school. It means that you will be blowing your nose twenty-bajillion times a day, but you will still stand up in front of the class and teach.
3. Wearing a name tag does not make you a teacher. You still need to establish your role as a teacher and not as a friend.
4. Something will always go wrong. You can plan for hours and hours and then suddenly a kid will be crying in the back of the class and all of your plans go out the window.
5. Even when you are tough with children they still love you and will hug you at the end of the day.
6. 5 year olds are more self-conscious then you would think.
7. You will become an expert at tying a double knot in less than 5 seconds.
8. When you line up the children, there will always be a shoe that needs to be tied.
9. Children don't care how well or horrible you sing, they just think that it is fun that you sing!
10. Any song that you listen to at school will now be stuck in your head for days.
(I still can't get this song out of my head!!)
11. Children need to move. They can't sit still for long!
12. If you ask students to ask questions, you will hear more stories than questions.
13. Be careful who you call on during a lesson. Some students just raise their hands because they have a story to tell about how their grandma died last night. This just throws off the whole mood of your lesson.
14. If you tell students to answer in a loud whisper, they hear the loud part and not the whisper. Then they yell and you start laughing in the middle of your lesson.
15. You really can't know what to expect until you are in front of a class.
16. For the first week, all the children look the same. They all have the same hair and they have names that start with the same letter. You never think you will remember all of their names. But you will.
17. There will always be a spill to clean up after snack time.
18. You have a teacher voice. You don't realize that you do until you are in front of 25 5-year-olds.
19. Sometimes you will feel like you look like an idiot. But in the eyes of kids you look awesome. Soak in this feeling when you can.
20. You are going to be tired. Every single day. Every single moment. But it is worth it. The children make it worth it.
21. Hand Sanitizer is a gift from the gods. Use it. Use it often!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Answered Prayers

To those of you who heard my testimony today, I apologize that I am repeating myself. This is an experience I just needed to write down for myself. Let's rewind to Monday night. I hadn't been feeling all that great. I had only gotten 3 hours of sleep the night before. I just was ready to go to bed. I told myself that I would come home from FHE and go to sleep. I was in my pajamas by 8:30- crazy for a college student, right? One of my friends dropped in for a visit. After she left, I had one of those moments where I just felt completely alone. I went to my room and prayed when a few simple words came to my mind. "Heavenly Father, Are you really there? And do you hear and answer every child's prayer?" These two lines from the children's primary song were stuck in my mind. In the moment, it is easy to doubt that Heavenly Father answers our prayers. How can He really hear every single prayer around the world? How can He answer every single one? It just

Becoming Myself: A Year in the Making

I have never really had the opportunity to be myself. I have always felt the need to hide who I really am because of those around me. The first time I remember doing this was in third grade. My third grade teacher was strict. This is much more than just the normal "mean teacher"- she would threaten to hang us by our toenails in the corner if we did not behave. Before third grade, I was very outgoing, but I lost that because of fear. It just went deeper and deeper as the years went on. My freshman year of college, I told myself that I was going to start new. I tried to be myself, but it was really hard. Then with roommate issues, I turned back into my shell. I hid who I was. The next year, I moved in with the"friends" that I had made Freshman year. 4 girls who I thought I could trust through everything. Things happened and by the time winter semester came, my two best friends moved out to go on missions and the other two girls who I had known since Freshman year

Our Story (Part 2)

Our Story:  Starting Our Relationship Part 2 of 2 Kindred Dead Show (1 month into dating) Our story was a little different than most, but I love it that way. I left off where we were just friends. When I say that we were just friends, I completely mean it. I didn't have feelings for him, he didn't have feelings for me. We both had moved on to other people. Life continued to move forward. As I said before, Gariet helped me through one of my hardest times with depression. He helped me when I just needed a friend. I needed him more as a friend than anything else. Meeting Gariet's Family We both went home for winter break. Gariet knew that I was worried about this because of everything that I was going through at that time. He stood by me, even though he forgot his phone in Utah. He would send me Facebook messages, iMessages, and called me on Skype. I started to realize that I still had feelings for this crazy boy. I kept denying it. I couldn't like