Today was my first day being an assistant teacher at Peninsula K-8, and what an incredibly exhausting day it was! I got there a little before 8, and met Teafly, the teacher. Every year, Caldera teaches classes in 5 middle schools all over Oregon. They call these courses "residencies," and they are all taught by artists. Teafly, as I later found out, does everything from photography to producing soundtracks for her own productions. The first class that she taught was a class of only Caldera students, who meet weekly. The class was a little hard to manage at first, but they settled down eventually. Because they had taken so long to get into the lesson, they didn't have time to go out with the cameras. The rest of the day went smoothly, except for the last class, which was the 8th graders. They were pretty rowdy in the beginning, but Teafly was able to calm them down, and they participated actively for the rest of class.

I mostly helped out by handing out cameras and other supplies, helping kids with questions when they went out to shoot, and downloading photos onto the computer in the middle of classes. One thing I learned from today is that I'm not sure if I would have the patience to teach middle schoolers!  I will be at Peninsula for the rest of the week, and I'm looking forward to it!