Dominic's blog

This week has been a very fun and exciting week. It started out kind of slow, but as the week progressed, it became fun-filled and engaging. This week, I participated in flight school and basically what we did all week was just simulate how to fly an airplane. It took a lot of practice and patience, but eventually, we all got to get up in a real plane and expierience first hand what is is like to be a pilot. I had a lot of fun and am maybe considering double majoring in meteorology with aviation. It taught me a lot about airplanes, how to fly them, and the many possibilities that await for people to discover about aviation.

 To me, patience is very important in life. From teaching little kids, to meeting critical deadlines, it takes a lot of time and effort to accomplish these goals. Without patience, life would be a lot harder because of the way people give up. For example, to get a job, it takes a lot of patience to actually get that job such as going to interviews and etc. But sometimes, patience can be very hard to practice. I found myself getting unpatient with the kids I was teaching, and it was challenging to understand them. But I am a person that is very patient so it doesn't really take that much for me to understand that patience is critical to the way we live. While I believe some people are born with patience, i also believe that some people develop that skill as they grow older and mature. Patience is a great thing to demonstrate and it makes life a lot easier to me.

Teaching little kids can be a challenge. With the short attention span of a kindergartener and the the energy that they can convey, it is really easy to become very upset when dealing with them. However, my advice when teaching lttle kids is to always come prepared with activities to keep them busy. Also, you must have a high patience level when teaching the kids. I'm not saying to be really nice and let them run over you, but one thing to understand is that you are dealing with little kids who are just starting to grow up and who don't know how to keep quiet whenever there is down time.

At Adams, with the different activities going on and all the kids that are attending that summer school, things can get pretty hectic. So because of that, we have to be organized and have a structured schedule. Basically, we start the week out by prepping activites for the different grades that we teach (k and 1st)  and when we get into the classroom, we introduce the kids to new vocab words and to a new scientist of the week, After that, we then go over the main project or activity that we want them to learn from and we all have class discussions about what the kids have learned that day. We usually teach first graders mondays and thursadays from 9:30- 11:45 and kindergarteners on tues. and wed from 12:30-1:35. The times we don't teach, we just prep for the next day for when we go in and see the kids. While it has been pretty fun, this experinence has taught me alot of things, such as having a strong patience and not letting the kids stress you out. Also, whenever teaching, you need to be orgainzed and on track for what you are going to do because people will have a tendency to lose interest if you don't know what you are doing. Other than those things, everything has been great here and hopefully it will continue to go great.