I am not great with kids, but I want to get better.So I put out a bunch of extra candy on my desk so the kids will come talk to me.

I taught kindergarten today. It went about how you would expect me teaching kindergarten to go. Only worse because I am in Jamaica, where all the pikni dem think it is fun to hug the white lady and laugh when she starts yelling in her funny white lady accent. I am in no way intimidating to 5-yr-old Jamaicans. Also I went into the classroom thinking (okay really just hoping) that I would be assisting another teacher and not be left alone with no lesson plans and 15 expectant children. Really I would have been excited to have anyone else in the room with me. Although any time another adult entered, it was to restore order to my extremely unruly charges, and that was quite embarrassing. But I was alone, with no instruction and no experience teaching--all day--a class of the wee ones. We colored a lot. It wasn't my idea, they just got into the coloring books and it seemed easiest to go with it. Unfortunately, they are 5, and have no attention span so coloring dissolved into fighting over crayons and ripping up the coloring books. We tried learning about the number 4, but some of the children held up 6 fingers when I asked them to show me four, and I couldn't let it go, so they all started acting out once I made them stand there with their fingers held up for 5 minutes. Simon Says worked for about 10 min, but they didn't understand the whole concept, we played a revised version. I tried reading to them, and that seemed to go the best. Except one or two children would interrupt me and I would react instead of ignoring them. I think my biggest problem, aside from lack of preparation, was that I wanted them all to behave perfectly. But there is always one. Always one. Mostly I spent hours running in small hopeless circles trying to get them to put their shoes back on, sit in their chairs, put away the objects they were thiefing from the teacher's desk and cabinets, quit hitting the girls, stop screeching. Towards the end, they were making huge dog piles on the ground. I attempted to pull these apart, but it was difficult as they were extremely wiggly. It was a colossal mess, folks. On the upside, I did not get hit by any rocks, but I did suffer from a few blows with a stick. I find this especially irritating as I lie to keep the children from getting spanked, the least they could do is not hit me. I mean, come on. I reported my failure to my boss and everyone in the office seemed amused. I don't know why because the children got zero education today. Zero. Some of them think 6 is 4, that is a terrible sign. To top it off, on the way down the hill (a journey I make twice daily) some guys decided to call out to me. This happens regularly, and I am more tolerant at some times than others. Today was not a tolerant day. I choose to ignore their ridiculous hissing (who responds to that, seriously?) and so they resorted to yelling, 'whitey', 'sweetie,' 'sweetheart' and other such nonsense. I paid them no mind at all--it was easy enough as I was brooding about my laughable teaching skills--but my stoic response seemed to irritate them. Then they called me a 'bad ass mother _____.' I'm not sure what to make of this. I know they were making fun of me, but I prefer to be compared to Samuel L. Jackson rather than called 'sweetie' by a gang of creepers. I gotta say though, my day ended on a high note with well behaved homework completers and I stayed busy so it wasn't too bad for a Thursday.