Bah!

Another little rant about the school at which I work: today, as my students were leaving the classroom, the faculty advisor came into the room and announced that most of them would be leaving our class on Monday.  While she couldn’t say which of my students would be leaving, she wanted all of them to be prepared to leave.
 
This sucks.
 
This sucks because we have developed a rapport with our kids and have definitely found the best way to work with them towards making significant gains in their learning.  It sucks because I can see Roberto getting excited in the classroom and working hard on his assessments.  It sucks because for the first time today, I had a conversation with Fernelys with him talking in English and me talking in Spanish and both of us laughing at how funny we must have sounded to everyone else.  I love my kids.  I love hearing them call me Ms. Umezaki and watching them get excited to do division problems.  I am guessing that the changes will be to either make our class entirely English as a Second Language learners, or to make it entirely English speakers.  This would have been great during the first week…but now that we are halfway through our curriculum…it sucks.
 
While I had not shed a tear in the school thus far, I was very very close when Roberto hugged me goodbye and when I saw Fernelys wave goodbye to me with tears in his eyes.  Also, for the first time, one of my kids came up to me and told me that I was a good teacher – this was unexpected and almost started the waterworks as well.  Today was a rough day.
 
I had my meeting with my advisor today to talk about my progress.  It was the kind of deal where I had to grade myself.  I hate grading myself.  Luckily, my advisor spared my ego and wasn’t as harsh on me as I was.  In fact, he really surprised me with his review since I thought he actually hated me.  Not to say that I don’t need to improve at all – I have a long way to go before I can be where I want to be – but it was nice to know that from an outsider’s perspective, I wasn’t a complete wreck in the classroom.
 
Let’s see how I do with a new crop of kids…