St. Pats

Yesterday, I was sitting inside watching a movie with 4th grade (we had indoor P.E. because of all the rain) and I began to think about how much I actually love the place. I love that I know all 152 students names and that I actually have some sort of a relationship with each and everyone of them. I have five months left at the school and I am going to make the most of it. In the past five months I have seen the students grow and I can only imagine how much they will continue to affect me over the remaining time. I can already feel how difficult it is going to be to leave the place.

Although I am finally realizing how much I like the place, I still find my job extremly hard. There are some kids, mainly 8th graders, who can't act properly. They talk back, which I'm pretty sure they don't do to any other teacher. It's only January and I'm running out of ideas of things to do with the kids. Mike and I are talking a lot more about lessons and using things that the each of us have done a lot more. Hopefully we will keep that up and can come up with lots more ideas together. So if anybody reading this knows of any games that I may not know already...please feel free to send them my way. I am also hopfully ordering more equipment this week so that can probably give me more things to do with the kids. My greatest challenge is coming up with things for the 8th graders to do. The computers also still don't have internet, but I believe a parent may actually be helping me with that so hopefully that will not be an issue soon.

I have personally set lots of goals for myself to keep me motivated thoughout the rest of my time at St. Pat's. I want to continue to be present at the school as much as I am. I do a lot there but I like that I can get so involved in the school. I want to work on my trust. In myself because I know that if I have set my mind on something I can do it and not feel as overwhelmed. In my community that they are there for a reason, to help me when I need it. And in God because I know that he would not give me anything that I would not be able to handle. I want to start to look on the possitive side rather then just the negative that occured that day. I want to live in the moment more. I always look foward to what is coming next whether is being something in particular or just the weekend, but by doing that I am not fully experiencing what is going on at the time. And finally I want to leave some kids of legacy at the school. Perhaps start a club or just do something in general to make me stand out. So with those, I hope that St. Pat's will help me to continue to grow.

Here are also some picture to finally give you a better idea of what exactly my job involves.


Our little tutoring corner in the computer room. We do one on one tutoring after school 4 days a week. I'm there everyday, Emily is with me on Monday's and Wednesday's and Anne is there on Tuesday's and Thursday's.


The computer room. There are 8 working computers. The colorfulness on the keyboards is the stickers I put on which they absolutly hate cause they can't see the keys.


The school parking lot, aka my classroom. You can see most of the school here too. Southern California schools don't really have hallways, all the doors are right into the parking lot which is where they have P.E. and recess.


The rest of the parking lot. It's hard to do things in here cause somebody always gets hurt. You can also see the church behind everything which is part of the school. The little building in the bottom right corner is the computer room from the outside.


The area where they eat lunch. There is only one class of each grade and 3 grades eat at a time. The door on the right behind the tables is the P.E. closet. The fact that it is so small shows you how little equipment I really do have.


Me leading the class in stretches. We start every class by having them line up on their poly spots and stretch and then running 2 or 3 laps around the yard (what they call the parking lot) and then we play whatever game we are doing.


Me with the kindergarten class. During the times where I don't have classes I go into different classrooms and help the teachers where needed. Tuesday morning's I'm with the kinders.