Teaching....I am learning as I teach

There are times when I am doing something related to teaching that I panic and think, "I don't know what I'm doing!!!!!!!!!!!!!" and it stresses me out. Other times it's good and I know what I'm doing.

The other day I was helping this girl who was 5 go over some sight words she was learning. Words she need to know how to say but not spell. One of the words was "is" and when I asked her what it was, she said long I instead of short I so she said, "eyes." I thought wow, that is so logical. English is so dumb. Then she came to "and" and was trying to sound it out, but try saying the a sound in "and" and nothing else. Go ahead, try. It doesn't match with any "a" sound that we are taught. And when she came to "the" she could never get it. We went over and over and over it. I just thought, "oh my gosh, Lord please don't let me get a teaching job for Kindergarten or 1st grade." Reading is the hardest subject to teach because it has no rules that apply.

And then I was helping a boy with adding and subtracting fractions of different denomenators. It was fine until we came up with an improper fraction which he divded and came up with 1.1 but what is that in fraction form? And I didn't know how to turn it into a fraction, even though I took a WHOLE class on fractions. Oh my gosh. I wanted to just pull out a calculator and tell him the answer. Are you smarter than a 5th grader? Apparently I'm not! Hahaha. But the rest of it went well.

Another boy I helped with reading, he could read great, knew vocabulary, etc. but didn't have a whole lot of comprehension. I realized I didn't know how to teach comprehension, so I had to go study up on it and come back with what I hoped would help. I think it did? But was with him a short time so it was hard to see the long term affects. Each kid though can have different areas they struggle in and on different levels, so as a teacher it is your job to move everybody forward when they're all on different levels.

On a different note - I finished the book "The Lucky One" and it was ok. I wouldn't really read it again. Now I've started on "Kiss" by Ted Dekker. It's one of those books I bought back in May or something and haven't read yet, haha. But it's good so far. It's not a romance book, it's more of a suspense/thriller book.