Longer: what life’s like in training
It’s been a busy week, and since I’ve gotten to talk on speakerphone with my household, the urgency to post has been lessened. There are 16 women who are getting the same training as I, and we have all of our classes. 10 of them commute, six of us are in the dorm. There are around 4 second-career people, and the rest were either teachers in traditional schools, or assistants in Montessori schools. I’m the youngest by a few years, but not by many.
This is what class looks like: students are at U-shaped tables, with the instructor in the middle, with the materials she or he is presenting. We students have binders with printed up instructions on what to do, and during and after class we add notes, draw pictures, and try to absorbe the minutae of every movement, for example, most things are worked through from left to right, except much of the math, which follows opperations (you subtract units before you subtract tens). We’re responsible for being able to give those lessons, and there’s a huge room that’s set up as a mega-classroom, with all the materials that 1-6th graders have. That’s where we’ll have practice, both in small groups of students and with the instructor’s supervision. They also check our albums to make sure we’re recording enough to do it right for the next thirty years of our teacher careers. Our albums are our only text books, curriculums, and resources.
My pattern of life has been: wake, pray, go to the un-airconditioned gym where I use some machine and read for class simultaneously.
7:05 I call the women and “have breakfast” over speakerphone until men’s voices start calling “good morning”. During this I usually walk the neighborhoods, stopping to introduce myself to cats or eat mulberries. Then shower, breakfast, gather my loads of albums, and go to class.
We usually have one class 9-12:00, on one topic (reading, or numeration (math)), with one or two 10min breaks. Then lunch (I’ve had the salad bar EVERY DAY twice - they even have lentils!). It’s an hour break, so I’ve spent some of my time at the IT place, getting my computer configured, some time going back to my room to get another album, or chatting with other students.
1-2 is a class, and it’s been mostly Montessori philosophy and practice.
2-5 is another class, which is always the longest feeling. We’ve done biology, writing, and today, math.
I usually have questions to ask after class, and then go back to my room to unload my many pounds of papers, binders, colored pencils, and pens. So it’s 5:30 by the time I reach the caffeteria.
Evenings look like practice, working on the albums, walks with the cell phone (often while the one:ten HH is having their supper), and this week we had lab twice. Future weeks it’ll only be once.