Yesterday was my first day of subbing as a TA for this school year. Bit later than in prior years, but I was at the lobster plant all September and most of October, so that's the explanation there. Anyway, both days were at the French school, but yesterday was just an hour and a half in the preschool and today was a full day (which is still only 5.5 hours, but hey, work is work).
So my first day at the preschool for the new school year is always fairly interesting. New names to learn, new kids to get to know. There's apparently 29 kids in the class this year (though they weren't all there yesterday, thank fuck) and I only knew two of them by name. And I always hear some weird new names every year, this year has probably the most. I'm pretty sure one of them was named after a video game character, so there you go.
It was a pretty fun afternoon, as soon as play time began, one of the kids took it upon himself to show me around the room (not the first time I've been at the preschool, but the first time with these kids) but he got sidetracked by the big Legos so we hung out there for a bit with some of the other kids. First time that's happened, and I had a good time playing with them. Usually at playtime I have no idea what to do so I just wander around the room aimlessly looking for someone who needs help, but this time I was actually interacting with the kids. It was a nice change.
Today was a full day, which went pretty much the same as any other full day I do while I'm there. It was really good to see all the kids again (though I didn't get to see the original preschool class I started out with back in my senior year of high school because they're upstairs starting this year and thus don't have much interaction with the elementary students, though I did see a few of them and I imagine that I'll wind up in their class soon enough).
Anyway part of my duties today, of course, included supervision in the cafeteria where I got to hang out (really, I'm a shit supervisor, I don't really do much unless the kids are really acting up, which they don't do much anyway) with the usual kids I end up in conversation with when I show up. And a lot of the kids were actually excited to see me. There were hugs involved, it's always surreal when that happens. Over the years there are always kids that get attached to me and are genuinely pleased to see me when I'm in and I can never figure out why. But whatever, it's always fun. And usually ends up being the most socializing I get done in a week. Far be it from me to question it.
Also I lost two games of Go Fish against two different groups of first graders, as you do. But at least I wasn't with the groups who were playing Trouble, because apparently things got a bit heated there.
