"Missy! Missy! Missy" ~

Just finished my first official week back at teaching, because I don't really count the two weeks I sorta-kinda taught in December. My body is sore, I have no voice (but it's because I have a cold that won't go away and yelling - I mean teaching - all day doesn't help), and I am in desperate need for a beer. But it's one week less of work, and one week more of experience. And here's what I've learned thus far.

Everything I ever heard from teachers before is true. Students are spoiled, disrespectful, lazy and out of control. Sometimes you feel like you are powerless, like you can never get your point across because you have to act like a maternal figure for 32 kids all at the same time. Let me tell you, I am getting the maternal skills I never wanted to get in the first place. Yet you regain that power when you see them looking all scared at you and actually listen for 3.2 seconds.

Which leads me to the positive side, and boy is it plenty (and also what I had heard from my fellow mentor teachers). Damn it's rewarding. To have a kid go from the kid who the first day was jumping up and down all over the place, to saying the words "Finally a teacher who's teaching me English," to making other students quiet down because he "wanted to learn." Seeing progress is a beautiful thing, specially when it's the ones who on the first day admitted to hating English because they didn't know anything,  who are the ones now constantly participating in class.

It's my first week. My journey and theirs has only begun.

~ 500 Times a day, 5 days a week  by my 7th graders