First day on the project and I wasn't totally traumatized!

I got up at 5:30 this morning to take a few breaths before reporting for duty at 7am.

Keep in mind that the youngest person I've ever taught was 16 years old, and a fairly mature 16 at that. I approached this day with a fair amount of trepidation--both because I just don't have that much experience with kids and I'm deathly afraid of getting sick (from what I understand, schools are hothouses of disease--and this probably only slightly an overstatement).

However, I did learn today that kids are actually not that different than adults. Teaching them requires a slightly simpler vocabulary and attention to how long individual activities take. But kids have essentially the same sorts of issues that adults have--needing a teacher who smiles a lot, projects lots of energy and enthusiasm, and is constantly monitoring for feedback. In many ways, I think kids have a greater potential to pay attention because they don't have cell phones or Blackberries to distract them.

So, in short, it was a real pleasure to work with 9-year-olds and above!

And on the project development front itself, learning to work with someone new is always challenging, but I'm really optimistic that my project partner and I are going to come to agreement about how to develop curricula.

I wish I had a funny little story about teaching today, as this post is more "technical" than I would like, but as it were, no kid threw up, cried (during our lesson, anyway), or got punished... so I'll take that.