Initial thoughts on my move from the Budget Office to a 5th Grade Classroom

I am working as a teaching assistant in the 5th grade. I am unbelievably slow at everything the teacher asks me to do. Taking down and putting up new bulletin board paper took me two days! I didn’t even decorate the boards… just new paper and boarder. I haven’t used a glue stick in about 15 years… I didn’t realize it could be so messy… I had it all over the table, on my hands, on my clothes. I couldn’t find any adult size scissors in the room so I had to use child size scissors… I had a cramp in my hand after about 10 seconds. Working in cubical world did not prepare me very well for an elementary school classroom. I can’t even add without opening up excel. Not really… I’m quite good a 5th grade math! With the exception of conversions… I didn’t know how many cups were in a gallon. I had to cheat… I looked at one of the students papers in order to complete the answer key for the quiz!

It has only been the first few days of school but it has been very interesting so far. I don’t think I have ever had someone pronounce my last name correctly the first time… but every student and parent got my name correct the first time. On the other hand, I still don’t know how to pronounce most of the kids names. The kids are wonderful and very excited about being back in school. I’ve been told to enjoy it because it won’t always be like this. We have a class of 14 students. I think only one or two of the kids are from the States. We have one student that doesn’t speak English. He knows some because a teacher yelled at him to stop running and he did… but for some reason when it comes to a classroom assignment he doesn’t understand… hmm. He’s actually very sweet kid and very good at math but he’s a little timid since he is new to the school and doesn’t understand everything.

I don’t know if all 5th graders are excessively detail oriented or if it’s just this class. The teacher will give the children a simple instruction, “write your name, date and the title at the top of your paper.” Seems simple enough. About 10 seconds later the hands start flying up in the air with questions. “Should I put my name on the left of the paper or the right?” “Does the date go on the left or the right?” “Does the date go above or below my name?” “Should I put my title on line three?” “Do you want us to underline the title?” “Can I get my ruler out of my backpack so I can underline my title?” WOW! This is going to be a long year.