A Stressful Fiftieth Post

This is my FIFTIETH entry to this blog!  I'm pretty excited about that. :)

Today's job was a morning in first grade that I'd accepted sometime last week.  It was at the same school as yesterday, but a different class.  When I took the job I thought it was for an English first grade, but yesterday I found out that it was bilingual as well.

The teacher told me that she was going to have the classroom aide do a bunch of stuff in Spanish since I don't speak it.  Unfortunately, after the kids arrived this morning I learned that the aide was sick and they didn't have a sub for her.  I got an assistant for about 45 minutes in the morning from some other room, but then I was one my own.  On my own with 25 kids who all spoke Spanish and had varying knowledge of English - it is solely a testament to how long I have been doing this that I managed to avoid having a panic attack.  A couple years ago I would have totally freaked out - inward freak out, but freak out nonetheless.  Now I just glide right over a freak out (realize that I should be having one) and move onto "Dang it, what do I do 

now?!".

What I did do was fake it.  I had kids translate for me when it was necessary, and basically had them reading, doing their on-going projects, and writing while I just tried to prevent chaos.  Mostly it was okay, but it was tiresome.  Tomorrow I'm subbing in yet another bilingual first grade (different school this time though).  Next week I'm hoping for a return to English because I'm really not cut out for this!