Kids – they all look adorable and some might even act cute in the time that you spend with them. It can also be possible that since they consist of so much energy into such a small body, it is possible that it can make you want to pull your hair out. Think that is too much to handle? Try having twenty-five seven and eight year olds talking to you for more or less than 7 hours a day. Not trying to scare you or anything like that, but here is my personal experience that I am going to share with you today to hopefully shed a little light on what it is like to be in a classroom.
Being an Elementary Education major, you are responsible for acquiring a certain amount of in-class observational hours that exposes you to what your future career could look like. It sounds pretty simple and it is since you are not completely in charge of the whole class. But being in a 2nd grade classroom has opened up my eyes to a whole different scenario and I am sure if you are in the same boat as me, it has changed yours too. Let me start off by saying that kids have such a mind of their own in which they are constantly being creative in anything they do. The first day that I had spent with these kids was a day full of events and drama (as those kids like to be involved in it). As soon as I had got settled in for the day with becoming familiar with the teacher and her students, they quickly became comfortable with me and instantly saw me as one of their parents, which means, all the problems quickly began to unfold in my lap. When the students would working on work independently and the teacher would be busy with another student, they would instantly raise their hand and look directly at me for guidance. Now before the day had started, I was completely open to the fact that something like that would happen, but when that time came of one after another coming up to me asking for help, it quickly became an overwhelming moment.
As time went by, the longer I had spent it in the classroom, I was able to notice that you definitely cannot play nice with them all of the time. I learned that there were boundaries that had been set in order for things to function somewhat normally. When you spend such an extended amount of time with a group of kids that come from different personal lives, it is very important to come to this work field with an open mind. If you do not come with an open mind and understand that anything can happen in a short amount of time, then this is not the right path for you. But if you love kids and the whole concept of spending multiple hours a day, putting so much work into them, and learning from them just as much as they learn from you, then I highly recommend looking into doing something along these lines.