July 10, 2008

Success! Or, for now, at least. Judging from what we'd seen in the past two weeks, it seemed that Kevin really enjoyed playing bingo. So, this time, he and I made a bingo board for him comprised of numbers, letters, colors and shapes. I helped him with some of them, and he would ask me "What's this?" then I'd tell him. We began really slowly, with me having to make comparisons ("What color is a stop sign?" or "What shape is the table?") or giving clues with my fingers (numbers) or sounding things our (letters; phonics). Eventually, however (the board was huge as far as bingo boards go), Kevin actually seemed to be getting the hang of it. I'm not really sure what clicked--maybe it was his extra effort to remember so that he could win a sticker at the end. Nonetheless, I feel like he worked extremely hard today, and definitely deserved more than a few stickers. Unfortunately, that's all we had, so I just praised him a lot.

Ahmed is the sweetest kid. I really don't understand why he's taken such a shine to me, but it's been pretty cool to be the "cool teacher" to him, and he's pretty great himself. We've started high-fiving when he comes in in the morning. He makes jokes with me while we're working together. At first I had some trouble trying to maintain the friendly relationship we had with keeping him in line--sometimes he'll get off-track and have to be reeled back into participation. But, like Ms. von Furt said, kids know when they're misbehaving more than you might think. I realize I can be more authoritative with Ahmed when he's not paying attention to me, but still be an ally in the end. Having such a relationship makes it so much easier to teach...and to be taught, I'd hazard to say.

Ironic that it took fifteen years for me to finally become one of the cool kids in the class. Feels pretty good, especially now that I can actually employ it to teach more effectively.