Monday, March 3, 2008

I survived the first week!

Well as some of you might know, I just started a new job last Monday! It's still pre-school but this time I just changed location and changed the whole teaching style and the teaching environment. From a german system, I now move to an international system dealing with children of expatriates and the elites. It sure will be an exciting or not so exciting career change.. who knows actually. I just know that with this job I have about 14 weeks paid vacation and of course I am intrigued and fascinated with the whole Montessori concept. So I'm not such a bad person at all changing jobs because of the perks (hey I'm only human here, don't you think so?) So bear with me. I want to develop my skills and expand my horizons. At the moment I will work as an Assistant Teacher. Since I don't have any Montessori Diploma I can't be a Montessori teacher. Well no worries about that because I have aspirations to take this degree in the next few months (or even years) to come.
A week is over and I have survived it! Yahoo! Whew this whole Montessori system is my ideal self. At work (I have to make a picture of the classroom the next time) each object and equipment has a definite place on the shelf. Marked with big signs you'll never miss it. At home I am the chaoitic me who drives her husband to insanity because of the chaos she creates. I think I'm going to be a new me after about 6 months of doing this job. Who knows? I might adopt the same system at home so the husband can find his staples and pencils and pens.
Nevertheless, my new colleagues have been helpful and accomodating to me. The kids have been nice (sometimes ), sweet and adorable and of course nasty and naughty. Well this is not new to me. Those little ones can be terrible especially if you are the new teacher. They test their boundaries and test you too. All this is tolerable and normal excepf this one mother who has been rather weird and unfriendly talking to me like a child uttering the syllable bel-la... (like the italians do it but she is english or american or who cares actually!! ) it seems the child had said I called her ....bel and she should be ...bella ... my oh my.. what a tragedy. well my colleague is my witness and she claims i have always uttered bella (the way the italians do it) oh well. so far i am learning new things here so that's what counts. Patience is the key to success. So I gave her my most polite smile.

So at the end of my post I'll end it with what I am learning as a Montessori (Asst.) teacher. If you find this not interesting you can stop reading from here. Thanks and till next time.

1. I learned that you should never point out to a child that he has made a mistake. You take a mental note of that mistake and let the child do it some time later again to give him the chance to correct himself. In the mean time you can get a new child to do the same thing again. If she does it correctly the other child will see this and will learn from it. The reason why you don't correct it immediately? I'll let you know in my next post.

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