Hello, Standard IV. I am Mr. Pat.

Brian Sinchak. When you read this name you may experience one or more of the following natural reactions: smile, laugh, vomit, punch the person nearest to you as a means of inflicting some of sort of pain, smile again, vomit again, or simply question who the hell this strangely named man is.

If your reaction is the last, let me take a moment to clarify. Mr. Brian Sinchak is a slightly annoying overly enthused jolly fellow who consumed approximately ten hours of my life during JVI Orientation last summer. He started the day by greeting us all at the door with his obnoxiously large smile and equally obnoxious bubbly personality. The discussion topic of the day’s workshop: How to be the most super stupendous fantastically phenomenal tremendous teacher in the whole wide freaking world! Glorious.

Six hours into his workshop I remember turning to a friend, doing my usual eye roll, and asking why I was still sitting through this particular session. Not only was I annoyed to my core by all his little gimmicks, but I was not even going to be a teacher!

I remember expressing my exhaustion and frustration to JV staff member Stephanie Galeota after the daylong session to which she replied “Hey, you never know what may happen. You just may end up in the classroom teaching!” Well Galeots, I now give you the pleasure of saying “I TOLD YOU SO!”

It’s true. I have now taken on the challenge of a classroom filled with a wild bunch of 10 year olds.

This new part-time job position came about recently when I realized I had some spare time in the office. Being a good ol’ apostolically available (slash underworked and bored) JV, I decided to look into what other needs there were in the community; the result, becoming a Standard IV teacher every Monday at St. Benedict School.

Yesterday, being my first day in the classroom, proved to bring about a number of challenges and many moments of laughter. The main challenge included teaching, without any experience mind you, in a classroom that I share with another teacher and her set of 30 students. How you teach students the importance of living and nonliving things when the other class in the same room is screaming, clapping, and running in circles as they play a game is something that I will hopefully come to master in time.

While the other class is enjoying a rowdy lesson two feet away, I am trying my best to explain to chubby little Alex that no, vines do not really grow inside people’s bodies and suffocate them by wrapping around their lungs, that was only a movie. Thank you, once again, American media for exploiting the minds of little children all around the world.

All in all, I am extremely excited and hopeful for this new teaching opportunity. I look forward to the various challenges that will present themselves as well as the moments where I will have to laugh at myself (and my students) for my complete and utter stupidity. And who knows, maybe by the end of this year, I will turn out to be just as super stupendous fantastically phenomenal as Mr. Brian Sinchak.

Fingers crossed.