Es posible que me cagé hoy.

Summer school started monday. We started the class out with 'getting to know you' activities. It lasts from 1-4 pm. The first day went well, I feel like. The upper school is teaching the rising 6th grade students. The students were somewhat responsive to what we were trying to communicate. I taught a lesson on personification and the children understood the term at the end of the class (each section is about 50 mins for summer school). Today was not so great. Chrissy taught long division, Athena taught about the scientific method, and I taught about folklore. It felt like (i want to say at times, but it was basically the entire time) we were fighting the class and working against them. We were talking about it after the class and it just seems like we have not authority to assert since this isn't our class, there's not graded activity, etc. One girl told me that she didn't have to call me Mr. because I wasn't her teacher. A lot of them sat there apathetically. I don't think they feel motivated to do any of the summer school work. I do'nt think the year will be like this. It's just the lack of control in the summer school situation. Hmm. I'm back in Charlotte on Thursday night for my sister's wedding saturday. Pretty stoked to get back. I'm going to have to watch what I eat however, because my body is starting to get used to the food here and I don't want to completely throw it for a loop (but i'll be darned if I don't eat BBQ in the best state for it, NC). Despite today being kinda rough, I'm still really excited to get into the classroom. Julie is our teacher and I feel like, given the time, she has done an incredible job of preparing us and fattening us up with chinese food and licuados. I say fattening us up, but i'm pretty sure I've lost weight since I've been here.

Help needed.

Here is part of an email I sent to my mom. It's all about things we need to read down here. If you have any of these things and can donate them give them to my mom. terrip@carmelbaptist.org . It would be a tremendous help. Since I'm teaching 7th, 8th, and 9th grade there needs to be independent reading. It's really important to find things the kids want to read, so variety is good. I'd like to have some stuff in my room and in the end expand the library of the school which at this point is a few shelves in a room. It's difficult though since I"m not in the States.

Magazines: For independent reading time. It doesn't really matter what they're about (i.e. Time, Sports Illustrated, Popular Science, whatever). The point is for the kids to be reading. So if people have old magazines sitting around we could use them.

Random Books: Books between a 5th and 9th grade reading level. These are also for independent reading time. I'm going to keep these and the magazines in my room for independent reading time and then at the end of the year give them to the library here. So if people have old children's books that would be awesome.

Three more copies of The Great Gilly Hopkins. I'm starting out the year in 8th grade with this and I'm 3 copies short of a full class set.

Four copies of The Giver. I don't have any copies of this but I'd really like to try and start out the year in 9th grade with this book.

If anyone has a book about Central American History or something, that would be awesome. This obviously is a long shot but I'd really like to be able to tie all this stuff to something they can relate to as much as I possibly can. For example, with Sounder, try and talk about how the slave trade related to them, etc. It's also important for me to have a better undestanding of their culture so I can present material with a culturally sensitive perspective as well as one with an intent to challenge critical thinking.

These books can all be used, that's not really important. Just let people know that I'm not asking for money, i'm asking for used books that once the year is finished will be donated to the school's library.


Thanks!

Viernes

We've been here about a week and things are going well (how do you summarize a week of living in a new culture?). It turns out one of the members backed out yesterday so BECA is scrambling to figure out how they will replace her. She, Nora, was scheduled to teach 3rd grade. Tim may end up teaching 3rd grade or we may have to bring in someone new (so if you read this and you're interested don't be afraid to apply). All this week we've been doing training with two teachers who are trained in ESL teaching. We split into upper (5-9) and lower (kinder-4) school in the afternoon and talk about different things such as theory and direct lesson planning ideas and activities. It's been really helpful for all of us and I think we're all feeling more adequately prepared to take on the task. This is the first year BECA has done this I believe. In the morning I have private spanish tutoring sessions with Ms. Sandra for 2 hrs. The time really flies by and I'm starting to pick up on the language. Ms. Sandra doesn't speak a lot of english, but this is good for me. The only time we really speak english is when we're going over vocab and she can't communicate what the word is. Yesterday we went to the supermarket and walked around and she'd point to stuff and hold it up and say it's name in spanish. The hands on learning is really helpful. We had a party the other night at Don Will's house. Don Will is part of the administracion/ the board of people who help make decisions for the school. He's a really nice guy who does a lot for the school. The administracion is throwing a party for us tonight at school that should be fun. Hopefully i'll be able to puut pictures up of the school at some point, cause describing it would be difficult.

Well hola hola.

Well we're here in Cofradia. The two flights were a mere 2 hours each. The seat I was on the second flight seemed to have been constructed for someone whose height was 5'5". We were picked up from the airport and were driven with two other girls, Allison and Tyler. There are currently two houses. A main one and a lower one. I'm in the lower one for now but that's temporary as many of the members of the team will be heading out to stay in homestays for the next little while (not sure how long that is). A chorus of roosters awaited me last night as I lay my head down on my pillow. Today we went into san pedro, a nearby city. It was like a 30 minute bus ride for 18 L. The people here are real nice, you can just tell with the ones arriving that they're a little more tentative than Chrissy and I are. I think you can attribute it to the fact that while Chrissy and I are coming down here, there is that sense of comfort since we know each other, these others are coming down here knowing nothing. They're all really nice though. More people are going to be arriving through the rest of the night.