Ignore my clothing in the pics, please! Our uniform situation has yet to be resolved. Laura and I are supposed to have teacher uniforms (gray suit with red shirt and gold scarf on Mondays, khakis and tan-ish shirt on Tuesdays and Thursdays, jeans and white collared shirt on Wednesdays and Fridays) but for a variety of reasons uniforms haven't been made yet. As Macas isn't exactly a place you want to buy clothes, we're basically wearing whatever we have that looks teacher appropriate. (Personally, that's totally fine with me. I'm not much in favor of conformist dressing, and I have a feeling that my clothes are much more comfortable! The Ecuadorians have a thing for ordering pants, and most of the time shirts, as tight as they possibly can be!)
Monday - Today was the first day of school by the calendar, but we did’t have classes. Ecuadorians are big on ceremonies, parades, etc., so that's what today consisted of. At 8:00, every school in Macas met at the town coliseum for a rally-type event. I can’t tell you exactly what went on, but they had several speakers that I’m assuming were town officials, and sang the national anthem of Ecuador. Laura and I pretty much just talked amongst ourselves, since all that Spanish was over our heads, and we sure didn't know the songs!
At 10:30, the UECE students and their parents met with the staff at our school’s gym for a meeting with just our school. All the teachers were introduced, more speeches were made, and rules were read. Let me just tell you, if you think your meeting are boring, try paying attention through a meeting where an entire school handbook is read, in Spanish!
After that, the parents and kids went home and teachers were free to plan. I got all my bulletin boards finished and put up, my laminated letters up (although one set I did accidentally put in the wrong class…no worries though, luckily we’re going to re-laminate them) and I got all my flashcards cut out and craft stuff ready for Tuesday.
Tuesday - First real day of school, with students in the classrooms. Very nerve wracking for me, the business grad with no teaching experience whatsoever! But, luckily it was a low-key day for English class, with the kids just trying to get used to everything and some of the little ones still distraught over mom and dad leaving. I actually only had 3 of my 5 classes due to Tuesday being the one off-day in my schedule, so I was very grateful for that little coincidence. I was pretty excited about the end result. No tears, everybody was super attentive (they really aren't used to anyone with light hair and blue eyes or English, so they pretty much just stare openly at me), and even a few waves, smiles, and giggles. I call that first day success!
The pics are of my 3 year old class, showing off their 'Hello' hands craft
Hello!
Obviously, I'm going to have to turn these sweeties into camera hams! Haha but aren't they cute?
Wednesday - After a great first day, Wednesday was a little rough. I had all five classes, and no Wendy to chapherone and back me up. For some reason, it seemed that the lesson plans I had made and imagined to be so much material, at least thirty or forty minutes worth, I could barely stretch into ten! And that was with me talking sooooo sloooow, and over-enunciating every word so they could understand. Very frustrating.
New frustration. A few kids were coming up and asking me questions in Spanish, not understanding that I can't understand them. Kids this age don't yet realize that not everyone speaks their language. As bad as it is to have the language barrier thing with adults, at least they understand that I don't speak much Spanish and they can rephrase the question. Little kids just don't understand why I'm not helping them. And it hurts me to not be able to.
One funny story came out of that though. One sweet little boy came up to me, and asked me an unintelligible question in Spanish. He kind of had that 'this is important' look on his face, so I took his hand and went off to find Wendy to translate. Turns out, he just told me he had a snotty nose and needed someone to help him blow. Precious little thing, probably wondered where I was taking him!
Playground pics
Cutie pie!
Aren't their little uniforms just adorable?
This little guy, he's cried every day missing Mama & Daddy. But as soon as Mama walks in and hugs him up, everything is all better :)
Deep negotiations over the truck
After lunch, I didn't have any more lessonplanning to do at the preschool, so I went over to the main school to do some more organizational work there. Since our preschool office cleanup/organizing job went so well, I was assigned to do the same to the main school's library. It was nowhere near as cluttered or unorganized, mostly just books on the wrong shelves, and about an inch of dust on everything.
Nice, neat shelves
Super old, super un-politically correct textbook I found...wow
Thursday - Probably the best day I've had teaching so far. I knew I needed to do something to stretch the lessons out, particularly for the 5 year old classes, plus I wanted the chance to be able to do a little one-on-one talking to them. So I decided to review a little, read a short story, and give my 4's and 5's a coloring sheet. Big success! They love to color (what 4-5 year old doesn't?) and it gave me a chance to walk around and chat with all of them, get to know them a little better while still doing classwork. Let me tell you, I have some personalities!
With my 3's, they're still a bit little to benefit from the coloring sheets, so I decided to let them have fun in a different way. I have about twenty CDs of kid songs, some Bible songs, some just fun. So I picked out 'If You're Happy & You Know It'. They were more animated than I've seen them all week. Just about all of them were standing up and laughing, trying to copy my stomping and clapping, and laughing at my facial expressions. Most fun 20 minutes I've had in a while. Best part - not one single sweetie was still crying for mom when I left!
These are my 5 year olds
This is one of my 'personalities', Danna. Definitely not camera shy!
I think these two have a little boyfriend-girlfriend thing going. They sure flirted over the crayons all morning!
Gabriel here was blowing everyone out of the water today, writing his whole name out.
Adrianna, she's a little sweetie.
My 4's. They're my most animated group, I think, though it's hard to pick.
My favorite picture of the day. A purple school bus!
I spy a future artist, contemplating his masterpiece :)
My group of girly girls.
I didn't get many pics of my 3's, too busy clapping and stomping. I will tomorrow though! Since the song was such a hit, we're doing it again!
This little chick had the biggest grin throughout the entire song! Loved it.
Friday - Today marked my three week anninversary of arriving in Ecuador. Quite unexpectedly, I woke up early, before my alarm clock even thought about going off, with what I think was a light case of food poisoning. What fun! I spent the day at home sick and taking medicine. I'm not one to get sick with food poisoning or anything like that at home, so I definitely didn't enjoy my Friday.
One upside to this - I don't have to pull out anything new in my Monday lessonplanning...I can just use everything I already had ready for Friday! haha
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