Another page for the book...

(the book that I'm going to write about being a special ed teacher)
Last semester, since I was not only an aide, but a "student teacher" as well, I took over the science curriculum and have taught that since the beginning of the year. We've done some cool units, such as fossils, plate tectonics, and recycling, and we are about to start life cycles. We ordered some stuff to help bring the lesson to life for the kids. Literally! We got a box delivered today that said "open immediately" and I was so excited that it was our science materials. The box had two vials of large red ants (with neon orange "Caution:Ants Bite!" stickers everywhere), and two cups with ten butterfly larvae. The butterflies will become caterpillars, then chrysalis, and then butterflies. (but you probably already knew that). The ants are for an ant farm, and we will discuss living in a community, etc. Okay, I am really drawing this out, so I'll just get to the good part...I carefully opened the first vial of ants and successfully dumped them all into the first ant farm. It was a little stressful. but not too bad. When it was time to put the second vial into that "farm" I dropped the vial and 40 huge ants started crawling all over the place. Luckily most of the kids were in reading, and only three were in the room at the time. I was doing it on a countertop, and two other teachers came to help, so we saved about half of them back (by scooping them up into the vials and then dumping them in their new farm home). Unfortunately lots of them walked right off the counter onto the floor and had to be stepped on. We were worried about them getting away before we could scoop them up, and as much as we sit on the floor in our class, we certainly did not want ants infesting our room. My blood pressure was through the roof and I was squeamishly trying to get everything under control. It was a mess but we laughed soo soo much. One of my coworkers get bitten on the pinky and it hurt really badly. She said it hurt much worse than a normal ant bite. I felt so bad!
Anyways, I always say it, but I love my job. Every single day is a new adventure and it never gets old. I can't think of a better way to spend 8 hours a day than caring for and teaching these kiddos. :)