Classes

Here's a bit of what I do (and you can scroll for a 23 weeks picture at the bottom).

I work as a nutrition educator in the Boston Public School system, and I have a pretty cool job. One, I pretty much make my own hours. I work with the teachers at a couple of schools at a time, they sign up for which hours/days work best for them, and then I create a schedule. I just started teaching on my own last week (Ok, so I was teaching on my own before that, but my supervisor came too to observe, and now it's just me.) and I'm having a blast. It's a little stressful at first making sure I have all the materials and that I've prepped enough, but I'm loving it. I teach 45 minute classes and this session (they're once a week for 6 weeks) I'm teaching a couple of K2 (they call pre-k and kindergarten K1 and K2) classes, two first, two second grade classes, two third grade classes, a fourth grade and two fifth grade classes. Twelve total. And a normal schedule is 14, but I had some teachers back out on me last minute and Tracie (my boss) said it was ok. I teach at least two, if not three classes a day so I don't have a full office day to prepare, but I get in at 7 and leave at 2:30 and so I usually have three hours in the morning to finalize my classes and prep for the next day or two as well.

I guess that's all logistics, but y'all wanted to know, right? On a more fun note, the kids are pretty fun and the teachers are really great too, which makes my job a ton easier. The K2 classes are always entertaining because when they're on the rug and I'm asking about different fruits or veggies their hands shoot up, and then when I call on them they can't think of anything to say. Crazies. There's also a little boy, Christopher, who, whenever he comes up to me and asks a question he puts his hand on my arm, so cute.

The lesson with a second-grade class today was how pumpkin grows from a seed to a pumpkin and then to pumpkin pie (hurray for Thanksgiving!). I do the lesson with a jack-o-lantern for October and thank goodness I brought in a plain pumpkin, there was a girl who was a (I assume) Jehovah's Witness and she told me that they didn't celebrate Halloween and so she couldn't put a jackolantern at the top of her plate. Today, we were doing the same activity but with pumpkin pie and there was a boy (different school) who, when he saw my example with a jackolantern at the top, said he couldn't do it, but I explained how we're using a pumpkin pie instead and not a jackolantern and he seemed confused at first, but I talked him into the fact that it was a pumpkin activity and not a jack-o-lantern one. Whew, who knew  this activity was so complicated! The things I'm learning…

I'm teaching some third graders and fifth graders tomorrow about fruits and veggies and some of them will even try some prunes. Hurray for nutrition!

we live on a dead end street above the train. i hear rust is classy these days, right? also, you can't really see the babe here, but you CAN see that my hair fits into a pony tail. with multiple bobby pins.