School!

Well- We're two days down in the school year! I was really nervous for the first day, but I over-planned my days, so I felt better once I got into the classroom. I have 19 third-graders, and their English skills are very limited. This makes it hard to teach math and science and things, just because you have to teach the vocabulary first, before you can teach the skills. Reading is also a difiicult class for me to teach, because we really don't have books or even a textbook for the class.

These are pictures of my classroom. I got it pretty well set up before school started. There is of course not as much 'stuff' available here as in the States, but there's a lot more stuff and better quality stuff available then in the Philippines. All the kids have their own textbooks (not for every class....but for any class we have books for, we have a brand-new book for each student).

There's a picture here of little Liam and Emma helping me decorate my room. They are the kids of Brian and Lindsey, who are teaching at Minerva too. The kids are in kindergarten and 1st grade, and they're very cute. They were a great help, of course. : )

I teach math, reading, phonics, writing, English, spelling, science, and art. It seems like it should all be more integrated, the reading and writing and English, but they are divided into seperate blocks. The kids also have social studies and spanish and a few other specials classes. The schedule changes everyday. Some days I have off periods in the middle of the day, but everyday I have the last period off, because that's when they have Spanish. It's a nice time to do planning.

My kids are kind of unruly, a lot more like the behavior of kids in the states, more than the quiet super-respect of kids in the philippines. Julie gave us all a classroom management system with green, red, and yellow dots, and each kids name on a clothespin. If they keep doing what they're not supposed to be doing, they move to yellow, etc. All the lower grades use this, and it seems to be working okay so far. It's hard to expect them to be quiet all day, because they are constantly having to work extra hard to understand English, and they naturally shut off sometimes. But overall, they're pretty good kids. Here is a picture of Santiago, who is the brother of our coordinator, Sandra; and Jonathan, who is my new host brother. Santiago is very smart and well behaved, and Jonathan is a pretty good kid too, though he doesn't understand as much English.

It's interesting living with one of my students, because every night I have instant feedback on how the classes were, what homework is too hard, and what he gets and doesn't get. Tonight he brought me his math book and said he didn't understand anything he was supposed to do. So I helped him with his whole homework assignment, but I don't expect any of the other kids will have any idea how to do it. It's a challenge.