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First Day!!!


My first day in the classroom was yesterday, Monday, 9/25. In the picture, you can see where I had a student write my name in chinese. They think it is so funny that we try to learn chinese, but they are so helpful in our learning. I taught two different classes of students for three periods (40 minutes) each. I taught class 1 from 0945-1145 and then taught class 2 from 1300-1520. By the end of the day I had used up all of my 30,000 words and was ready to just sit and listen for a while. I actually have three different classes of students and I taught class 3 today from 0945-1145 and then had office time until 1630. We officially have 118 freshman and they are divided into three different classes to make it a little easier to teach.
For the next two weeks the freshman are in an orientation phase and we are given more time to teach. So, for these weeks I teach each class a total of 5 periods a week. That makes about 15 hours a week. My voice will need some encouragement. After the orientation phase, we back off to four periods for each class per week. I like having more time to teach, but my voice will like the break!!
The students are awesome! I do have to use creative ways of describing things and never realized how many colloquialisms we use in english. It is a challenge to speak slow, with proper enunciation and be able to convey the right definition or idea at the same time. You all would "get a kick out of it"!!! (I would not be able to use that expression;o)) For our first class time I talked about the course description, the schedule of reading and assignments, the rules for class and lab time and what they will be learning during this semester. I also explained what Fundamentals of Nursing means and different things they can do to learn better. I told them that they would have a quiz every class time and they could not believe it!!! It is cute to watch their responses and expressions. This is a challenging program for them. It is a bilingual program and they do have classes in Chinese, but for our classes everything is in English. Some of them have very good speaking and comprehension skills, but many can speak more than they understand. Little things that we say or take for granted, they do not know that they mean. I continually ask for wisdom and discernment. It is a challenge to determine what they are really understanding because they do not want to ask questions because they do not want to disappoint the teacher.
I am very excited to be in a classroom setting and be able to share in their learning and to tell them why I enjoy being a nurse. I do miss my PICU, but this is such a great opportunity!!!
I have the privilege to work with some really great people and that makes this even better.
Know that things are well here!! and enjoy the pictures at shutterfly!!

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