Two Days In

How's teaching going? Well, two days in, I've already been tackled and molested.

On the first day of class, we're told to play ice breaker games with our students so that they become better acquainted and comfortable with one another. Unfortunately, students can only play so many games of People Bingo (get creative, teachers!) before they've had it up to here. Jessica taught me a game that essentially amounted to get-to-know-you musical chairs. Let me tell you, the shyest students are also the most aggressive if it means not having to share a factoid about themselves. Hence, if the teacher and a timid student find themselves running for the same stool, it quickly becomes a smack down.

On the first day, a student literally knocked me to the ground so that she could get to the stool first. Like any teacher would, however, I let my competitive instinct kick in and grabbed her ankle, holding her back long enough to get there first. Point for teacher!

The following day in a different class, in a skirmish for the last stool, a student makes accidental (yet prolonged) contact with his hand on my genitals. This action, of course, mortified him and left me unsure of what to say. Someone from the side cries, "Mr. [my last name]! You just got molested!"

Not exactly the type of incidents I would expect to be most memorable after two days of teaching, but I'm going to guess this stuff will be par for the course in my classroom.