Great Teachers

I got to thinking about great teachers I have had in the past today while doing homeschooling with Lucas.  I am not cut out to be a teacher.  I do not have the patience that you need to help a child learn.  I get frustrated when Lucas knows the answer, but then he says he does not know and won't try without promoting.  I am not sure how much to assist, if I should let him make mistakes without correcting them to encourage more writing, and most of all how to make it interesting and different.  I thought about some of my favorite teachers like Mrs. Rigano, Mrs. Carter, Mrs. Simpson, Mr. Bag well and Mr. Foskel.  I remember their classes being interesting, different and challenging all the time.  We were always doing something creative in Mrs. Rigano's class and writing stories about a character we created at the beginning of the year and wrote about all year long.  We built a science hut to do science experiments in, we had a class election and did the Olympics after researching our countries.  She was by far my most creative teacher and I remember some things we did like it was yesterday.  I hate that Lucas is missing out on that and I know I will not be his favorite teacher, but I hope he has good ones like I did.  He is a really smart kid and I want him to be able to learn what he needs to make it.  My sister and her husband and my sister-in-law and her husband and my friend are those kinds of teachers that kids will remember.  I have heard some of the fun things they have done and just know their kids will say they were the best teachers they had.  I hope Lucas has teachers like them.  In the meantime, I hope Matt and I can do our best to teach Lucas what he needs and make it creative and fun.  I am so busy learning and trying to pass on Spanish these days that I forget to work with Melayna on her age appropriate concepts too.  We have starting working on shapes, colors, letters and numbers again and I have to day it is harder without all the toys and books we had when Lucas was little.  It makes you realize what low income families and families in countries like Ecuador where toys are so expensive have to overcome if they want to teach their children well.  For example puzzles are really expensive so the daycare has drawn pictures on cardboard and then cut them into pieces to make a puzzle, which does not stay together and only frustrates the kids.  Once we started looking, we have been able to use the environment more to teach her, but it has taken some time.  I will remember how hard it is next time their is a toy drive for any organization and get those kids toys they can use to learn and excel.  My lesson of the day is that teaching is really hard and to remember to thank teachers often.