I just realized how WEIRD that entry name sounds... I don't mean kids between Nate and I!! I only called it that to say that I am talking about Nate, and "my" kids at the elementary school I do field experience at. LOL!

Nate called me yesterday, to my great surprise. On the whole the conversation went well, which was great. I steered away from the "us" topic (since somehow he is still stuck on the idea) as much as I could and fortunately that worked pretty well. There was one point where I started to get really irritated with him, but God came through and thankfully our conversation didn't end on that note.

Nate broke his knuckle hitting a wall when he was mad at his parents last Sunday. That was the point where I started losing patience with him. That was a really stupid thing to do. He is 17 years old, for heaven's sake, and he's still throwing temper tantrums! UGH!

Now, to top it all off, he is behind in school because he's had to go to the doctor's and stuff. As if his grades aren't bad enough already... He just doesn't seem to learn! And he gets mad at the stupidest stuff!

But I should stop... He doesn't need another parent. And chances are he'd treat me the same as he treats his own mother. Not to mention his sister... I should've picked up on those things when I was going out with him. I'd read several times that the way your boyfriend treats his mother and other females in his life show the way he'll treat you eventually. I was dumb, though, and instead of looking at the way he treats his mother and sister, I looked at the way he treats his girl friends (that's friends that are girls, by the way), which is pretty decent, of course. Who in their right mind would treat their friends badly?

{sigh} But let me move on. I'm glad I'm not "involved" with him anymore, to say the least. But I don't know how to get him to back off... He's still stubbornly adheres to this "us" idea.

So anyway. Moving on to pleasanter topics. :)

Working with the kids today was so fun! The time went by so fast... I like that. I like having something to do that passes the time.

Mrs. A is having me work with them individually on math--of all things! Goodness. Today I made the silliest mistake. Apparently I can't multiply 6 and 2, LOL.

I was working with the smartest girl in the class, too! The problem was, like, 25 x 61. I had the problem written out on a scratch piece of paper, because I cannot multiply two 2-digit numbers in my head! But somehow for 6 x 2 I had gotten 18. Cassie was doing it as I watched her, and I corrected her "mistake"... And she got really confused and asked me, hesitantly--because, of course, the older person (aka "teacher") is always right--"Isn't... 6 x 2 twelve?" I looked at my work, saw my mistake, and realized what a dork I'd been. Good grief. She must think I can't do math, and I'm, like, 8 or 9 years older than her! LOL.

I was laughing to myself as I walked back to NNU, happily in the sun, from the school: "Man! I can tell you the difference between adjectives and adverbs, and I can tell you what the future conditional conjugtaion of French verbs is, but I can't multiply 6 and 2!" It was pretty funny. :) At least Cassie understood.

All the girls in that class are great. Most of the boys are, too. I like them all.

Lainey and Dominique are the "loud" girls. The rest of them are the sweetest, most docile creatures you could ever meet. Lainey and Dominique are really funny, though.

Moises is my favorite boy. He's a sweetheart. Quintin I worry about. He's "very emotional", Mrs. Ashley says. He's very sensitive to criticism. I'm afraid to tell him he's wrong because I want him to feel good about himself... I hope, though, that God uses my own emotional, sensitive history to let me understand Quintin better so I can help him.

I didn't have a lot of success "helping" emotional Nate. But then, he is not emotional and sensitive. He is emotional and melodramatic. At least Quintin is the quieter type. That does make me worry, though... Nate will never have trouble with self esteem because he's so stuck on himself.

Sorry... As you can see, I'm still a bit annoyed with him. :P

Oh, Joy... I like her a lot. She is really sweet and really intelligent. When looking for something to do a research project on, she chose Florence Nightengale! If that's not cool to see in a 4th grader, I don't know what is. :)

Jasmine is really cute. She has a cute smile and an innocent nature.

Cassie is really smart and also really mature for her age. I wonder if she is just naturally like that or if she's had to undergo some unhappy circumstance to make her more mature. :( She's another one of the kids I worry about sometimes. I see a lot of me in her and I hope that she has some good friends.

Okay... I've got to head for choir now. Now you have some brief sketches of a few of the kids in my field experience class. :) As I get closer to them and more into this "teaching" thing I'll probably write more about them. :) I like this part of life right now, a lot!

Later!

-Stephanie

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