Teacher's Nightmare

As a kid going on field trips were always the highlight of going to school because it was a time to relax from the normal school schedule and hang out with friends. Now, as a teacher, field trips have become one of my worst nightmares...at least it is with this fourth grade class. This past week we a crazy one: training on Monday, student eye exams on Tuesday, early dismissal on Wednesday, and then a field trip to the Museum of Natural Science on Thursday (my third time there).

Anyway, to put it quite simply it was embarrassing to be on the trip with these kids. They were unable to listen to the people at the museum and would wander off and try to do their own thing. The poor lady at the end of the tour looked to me and said, "Thank you for being here. If you weren't here I'm not sure what I would've done." I'm used to getting this kind of behavior from them so I've learned to be very firm with them but I'm pretty sure that these volunteers at the museum have very little contact with kids from this background. One of the groups had this lady that looked like she was in her 70s...she could barely walk up the stairs without getting out of breathe, there was no way those boys were going to wait around and listen to her. We were only at the museum for two hours but all of us teachers were more than ready to leave because it was exhausting keeping them on track. The rest of the day was a joke because the kids didn't want to learn and we didn't feel like forcing anything anymore.

Besides that the kids have been pretty good. I don't know what it is with these group of kids but the boys love giving us hugs. I'm not a hug person at all and they're at an awkward height right now so the situation is slightly uncomfortable. lol They also have this weird thing where they call us mama so instead of calling me Ms. Wu they'll call me their mama Wu...which is weird but whatever, I just ignore it and move on. I've also noticed that quite of a few of the kids in tutoring don't actually need the tutoring, they just need to learn to focus long enough on a standardized test to do well. I think that it's a combination of the lack of ability to focus and the fact that they don't care that causes them to perform poorly on a test that they could do well in. I'm still in the process of trying to figure out how to work on that part during the tutoring time.