Thursday, September 3, 2009

fat and smelly teacher

there are a million positive aspects of home visits. i'm loving almost every minute of them, and am learning so much about my little ones and their families. so far i have two downsides:

1) taking off my shoes. after a long day of teaching in cute flats my feet leave something to be desired. so every time we walk into someone's house and i realize it is culturally appropriate to take my shoes off my stomach drops. i'm imagining the conference interrupted by a "what's that smell?" from my kid. or worse, their parent. i spent the whole time thinking about my feet.

2) eating. don't get me wrong- i LOVE eating. and i love eating ethnic food. i'm not a picky eater, and i'll try almost anything. but at the moment, because i love eating so much, i'm trying to keep track of my calories. of course, when food is set in front of you and you are directed to "eat all of it, please we made it special for you", or you are handed a glass of liquid and are told this is the student's favorite juice from japan- you have no choice- you dig in. "mmmmm, delicious. what is this?" you ask, only to be given the name in the native language. which is great and exciting except that i have no idea how many calories i am consuming from being polite. stealing a glance at the wrapper doesn't help because it's all in a different language. (and ultimately this means i don't know if it means i have enough calories left to have a glass of wine at the end of the day- which is the biggest problem) i have no idea what i drank a few hours ago.

of course everything else about home visits has been wonderful, and really, it is so sweet when families offer food that i can't complain at all. it's totally worth the extra calories, even when fabulous friend pushed corn puffs into the top of the corn muffins her sister had given us. there is nothing like a five year old tea-party.

but really, if these are my two biggest complains- it just goes to show that i really do have the best job in the world.

1 comment:

Sneaker Teacher said...

I remember the same thing about home visits! So much food! And it's just not okay to say no thank you! I only did home visits as part of teaching in head start and now I am at the elementary level, but I did think they were a great way to get to know more about students and families.

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Katie