School starts etc
August 27, 2005
We started school on Thursday. We had a half day. Kids showed up at 7:30 and left at 10:30. I had three, Carrie had three, and Amy had one. Seven kids. It sounds great doesn’t it? We actually found it quite challenging. Fortunately my three were all on the same grade level. We did a little work and got to know each other.
The first thing they did when they entered my classroom was take their shoes off. I spent the day bare foot. Quite a change from NYC where I was discouraged from even wearing sandals.
On Friday I got a new student named Marc. He is older than the others. I have three second graders and a fourth grader. That should be a challenge. I have to design lessons to stimulate all of them.
That really is the challenge with having so few students. I think ideally I would like to have ten or twelve students. That way there can be more stimulating conversation. There are more ideas thrown into the mix. With so few students it is difficult to create a discussion. I have discovered that my lessons need to be much more thorough. The fewer the kids, the shorter the time to complete tasks and that means that I need to have either more tasks or more comprehensive tasks.
The bonus is that I have time to focus on individuals. When I conference, I can get to all the kids in a day. I will have the opportunity to get to know them well. They are bright kids. I have given them tasks that I gave to my third graders and they have done much better at completing them. They are attentive and focused and expect me to give them work. My third graders couldn’t copy things off the board to save their lives, whereas these students do it quickly and efficiently.
The rain here is amazing. Last night around ten, the wind picked up, the skies opened, and water poured forth. It came in great buckets that created muddy rivers in the street. The mud is a beautiful copper color. It is rich and vibrant and seems to glow when the rain has left it.
The plants and birds are amazing as well. Everything is so green. The Baobab trees are tremendous sculptures that tower above the Earth. Their trunks feel like cement. It seems as if nothing could topple them. There are lemon trees and Fichus trees and palm trees and trees I have never seen before. They are thriving and green and lush…for now. I understand that when the dry season comes it will all turn brown and shrivel.
There are these beautiful iridescent blue birds that land in trios on our lawn. They have long tails and bright yellow eyes. They don’t sit still very long, they are ever watchful of movement. Another cool bird is these big white things with large orange beaks. They are about the size of a crow with a hooked beak like a parrot. They go where they want and they only move when they feel like it. Their beak is rather intimidating.
The bugs are a whole different story. Fortunately they spray the buildings in the village so I haven’t seen a lot of live ones, but the carcasses are astounding; wasps as big as my ring finger, spiders as big as a silver dollar, centipedes, ants, and acid beetles. Acid beetles are these big ugly flying creatures that regurgitate a burning liquid when they land on you. The liquid must be diluted immediately with milk or water or it can create blisters on your skin and spread through contact. I can wait a long time to see a live one of those.
We started school on Thursday. We had a half day. Kids showed up at 7:30 and left at 10:30. I had three, Carrie had three, and Amy had one. Seven kids. It sounds great doesn’t it? We actually found it quite challenging. Fortunately my three were all on the same grade level. We did a little work and got to know each other.
The first thing they did when they entered my classroom was take their shoes off. I spent the day bare foot. Quite a change from NYC where I was discouraged from even wearing sandals.
On Friday I got a new student named Marc. He is older than the others. I have three second graders and a fourth grader. That should be a challenge. I have to design lessons to stimulate all of them.
That really is the challenge with having so few students. I think ideally I would like to have ten or twelve students. That way there can be more stimulating conversation. There are more ideas thrown into the mix. With so few students it is difficult to create a discussion. I have discovered that my lessons need to be much more thorough. The fewer the kids, the shorter the time to complete tasks and that means that I need to have either more tasks or more comprehensive tasks.
The bonus is that I have time to focus on individuals. When I conference, I can get to all the kids in a day. I will have the opportunity to get to know them well. They are bright kids. I have given them tasks that I gave to my third graders and they have done much better at completing them. They are attentive and focused and expect me to give them work. My third graders couldn’t copy things off the board to save their lives, whereas these students do it quickly and efficiently.
The rain here is amazing. Last night around ten, the wind picked up, the skies opened, and water poured forth. It came in great buckets that created muddy rivers in the street. The mud is a beautiful copper color. It is rich and vibrant and seems to glow when the rain has left it.
The plants and birds are amazing as well. Everything is so green. The Baobab trees are tremendous sculptures that tower above the Earth. Their trunks feel like cement. It seems as if nothing could topple them. There are lemon trees and Fichus trees and palm trees and trees I have never seen before. They are thriving and green and lush…for now. I understand that when the dry season comes it will all turn brown and shrivel.
There are these beautiful iridescent blue birds that land in trios on our lawn. They have long tails and bright yellow eyes. They don’t sit still very long, they are ever watchful of movement. Another cool bird is these big white things with large orange beaks. They are about the size of a crow with a hooked beak like a parrot. They go where they want and they only move when they feel like it. Their beak is rather intimidating.
The bugs are a whole different story. Fortunately they spray the buildings in the village so I haven’t seen a lot of live ones, but the carcasses are astounding; wasps as big as my ring finger, spiders as big as a silver dollar, centipedes, ants, and acid beetles. Acid beetles are these big ugly flying creatures that regurgitate a burning liquid when they land on you. The liquid must be diluted immediately with milk or water or it can create blisters on your skin and spread through contact. I can wait a long time to see a live one of those.
posted by Bronx to Timbuktu at 11:36 AM
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