Our first week of school went by so fast and now that I have
almost mastered how to pronounce all my students names its time to start moving
on to lessons. Lesson planning out here has proven to be a challenge for me. I
am used to have unlimited supply of internet at home where I can just google
anything I have questions on. That doesn’t happen here. I have to walk to the
office in order to get internet because the server does not reach my classroom.
The second challenge I face is the limited supplies that our classrooms have.
Some of my ideas work and the students love them and get so much enjoyment out
of it. The second idea is a complete fail and we all end up laughing and
deciding that didn’t work.
On Monday I had what I like to call a teacher moment. It’s a
moment when you become a proud teacher because you can see the light in the
student’s eyes and see that they understand what you are teaching them. We were
reading a short story from our literature books. Reading has been a complete challenge for me.
My favorite subject to teach soon became my least favorite. My students have no
problem with reading fluently they just have no idea what they are reading
about. I finally found a process that seems to be working from them. I stop
after every paragraph and ask them all the vocabulary words that are not tier
1. Sure enough my students know the word just not the meaning. So reading a
text takes a lot longer than I ever expected. Here comes the exciting teacher
moment. I told my students to put the books away and we were moving to math.
They ALL go, “No, no teacher the book is so good we have to continue reading.”
I was so excited they actually understood what they were reading and they liked
it! J
We are finally starting to get into somewhat of routine now
that we have been living in the same place for almost two weeks. Many of my
nights have now been spent out on the sand volleyball courts. The locals are finally
realizing that we are not tourists that are staying on the island. We are
actually the World Teachers. I am slowly starting to learn the names of them.
One of my favorite things about playing volleyball here is everyone plays and
everyone has fun while doing it. I am not going to lie my favorite part of the
night is when all the little ones get kicked off the court and the older ones
are playing. By the end of the night we are playing under the stars and using
the glow of the stars and moon to light the courts.
After a couple of hours of volleyball we have a tendency to
go sit on the rocks right next to the harbor. There are some huge black rocks
that form a little pier by our harbor. We sit on the pier and watch the sunset
behind the mountains. Once the sun has set we lie down on the rocks and look at
the sky full of stars and listen to the ocean waves crash against the rocks.
Just think we are all looking at the same moon at night just at different
places in the world. If you would wake up at two or three in the morning we
would even be looking at the moon at the same time! J
With Love,
Abby
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