Watching "Overwhelmed" Happen

In the center where I work, my classroom is considered the most tough to work in. The kids coming into my room go from a 1:4 ratio (1 teacher to 4 kids) in the toddler room to a 1:10 ratio (1 teacher to 10 kids) in my room. My classroom has a preschool component to it in that we do 'centers.' Due to the centers there's more transitions. The kids in my classroom don't drink from sippy cups, they drink from open topped cups. In short, there's more kids overall, more kids per teacher, more transitions, more structure, and a slew of other things.

In the 4 1/2 months I've been working at this place, I've had 2 people come work in my room for a few days. They come in because they are being considered for an assistant position in my room. I've seen both people go from gung-ho, excited to be there at the beginning of the day to completely overwhelmed, not knowing what to do by the end of the day.

So imagine my surprise when the first day I have a student teacher and she was just as gung-ho at the end of the day as she was at the beginning. Seems like it's going to be a good 6 weeks with her :) I'm excited!