School Days

We made it! We successfully (I think) completed our first week of teaching! Considering that it's all pretty new to me, I think it went pretty well. I have learned a lot of things about teaching kids and classroom management and still have a long way to go. It is neat to really get into the teaching and begin to feel responsible for the children's education. Today in the Foundation class, which is the equivalent of Preschool, we had a unit review where we tested the kids on the letters m, p, and t, the shapes circle, square, rectange, and triangle, and the numbers 1-5. Only about 3 of the 10 children could actually pass the test. So now it's time to regroup, go back and figure out how we can get the other students up to par. I like the challenge and plan on spending an afternoon this weekend pondering how to engage them. I am very thankful because we have no school tomorrow! It is St. Joseph holiday tomorrow. It will be nice to have a three day weekend and hopefully I can look over the whole next week's curriculum instead of going day by day which is what I did this last week.

I have been getting to know the kids better. My favorite part of the day is either teaching the three year olds (which is basically play time in English) or hanging out with the kids after school until their parents come to pick them up. Some of the kids are there until 5:30 and school ends at 4. We play soccer sometimes, or hopscotch, or play with the sweet train set (the really nice wooden ones). It is fun to be able to play around and not have to remind them every five minutes to sit still, or be quiet, or write their name on their paper. Plus it's a great time to get to know them better.

There are a few students on my heart that stick out to me. They are not well behaved and very hard to handle at times but I really want to get through to them, showing them both love and discipline. Please pray for me in this.

One other very exciting thing this week....Paul and I got to go to a soccer game! It was.....well, I will have to leave that for the next post and keep you all wondering! But it was definitely an experience!

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