I now have two days of school behind me. Today went more smoothly than yesterday. Yesterday, I mostly felt like I was surviving. I didn't know the students, they didn't know me...and it felt very strange with only two of them in class at a time, so I was feeling a little uncomfortable. I'm sure they felt a little awkward as well, because they're accustomed to knowing their teachers for the most part, and they don't know me (and in some cases I was the only teacher they didn't already know). After yesterday I knew I could make this work, but I didn't know what exactly I would need to do to make it work well.
Today was much better. I had a little bit better sense of the students and of pacing. I clicked into "teacher mode" at least with the high schoolers. It may take me another few days to get a sense of the middle schoolers - what I can and should expect of them in terms of ability and learning, but at least we mostly have a sense of rapport down. I brought in some pictures of my family (and my cat) to show them, and they enjoyed that. I still need to figure out what I'm doing for tomorrow, but I'm not too worried that I'll be able to get something figured out. It's just definitely a change teaching 2 kids per class, especially when in some cases one student is much farther advanced than the other. There's no buffering of other students who are halfway in between, and there's no "hiding" it either. Even with the fewer kids, I'm also spending more time in school actually teaching than I'm used to. Preparing for class is much more time consuming as well, but grading is nothing, which is nice. In the long run, it will probably be less work, but right now, getting the hang of it seems a little more difficult and a little more out of my comfort zone...but it's coming.
So for now, I'm going back to preparing for tomorrow. Hopefully the process starts going more quickly soon!
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