The front of the house:
The backyard (with some wires to hang out clothes dry. Only thing is...it rains here every night and this has no cover. Maybe that could be a problem.) The rain is cool. We get thunder and lightening every night. Sometimes it also gets really windy. One night the electricity even went out, but only for 10 minutes. Christina and I really enjoy it, plus the rain cools down the heat a little:
The street leading up to our house (there is a public school on the left, a park on the right, and beautiful mountains in the background). This is the only time I have ever seen the street empty, Sunday morning at 8:00am:
Christina hanging up our wet clothes (inside...safe from the rain):
Here is my classroom at school. Love the 1950's desks. The walls are concrete so nothing sticks to them. The teacher last year just glued stuff to the walls (yep...I said "glued"). So when they painted the classrooms, they had a woman scraping off all the stuff for hours. The worst part is they probably still use lead based paint here. The school has issues with us nailing stuff into walls so basically I can't hang up anything. The posters you see in the photo all fell down by the next day.
On Friday, a student brought a hedgehog (or maybe it is a porcupine...not sure) to school. His dad and him found it on the beach. It was pretty cute but I felt sorry for it. It kept trying to sleep and kids were all poking at it. 
As far as school goes...The kids behavior is fine. They really respond well to even the least bit of positive comments. They do their work (at least so far). The biggest problem is their level of English. All of my students know very little English and have major problems with pronunciation and grammar. Only about four kids participate orally in class and the rest just sit there. I often ask a very literal question about something we just read and the class just stares at me with blank faces. Christina and I are brainstorming ways to get them to have more talk time (but still balance it with getting the ridiculous workbooks done).The school staff is interesting. Only about 3 teachers at the school are fluent in English. And none of the administration or office staff speak any English at all. The first grade teacher, who teaches in English, is far from fluent and has very poor pronunciation. The fluent ones teach 4th and 5th. They should really switch that around so at least the kids get a good base in 1st grade. I guess I can't go about reorganizing their school when I have only been here one week.
5 comments:
Okay,
I want to comment on the photos.
The house looks cool, right on a corner which is a great place to sell hamburgers or other items out of a cart with a donkey.
The backyard, too neat. Lots of open space. Is that an old beer keg behind the bannana tree?
By the way that clothes line looks like it is a little over engineered for what it was intended for. Note the heavy steel. Were you doing some painting too?
The street reminds me of Costa Rica, lots of walls with adversitements, plus lots of trees.
Christina hanging her clothes, okay...how about a drying rack or clothes horse to dry them. I remember my grandma using one in wet weather.
The classroom is classic. Reminds me of my middle school math class, stark. To solve the problem of hanging stuff up you can use "blue tack". You can find it at Lakeshore, I am sure you have one of those close by...NOT! I'll get you some, works great.
Okay that poor creature. What happened to him? He didn't end up as dinner for the family did he?
By the way it is hot and humid here too, although I bet not as bad. Don't worry in another two months it will be the dry season.
Stay cool.
Rob and Family.
Also...of course the kids are great, it's the first week, just wait until the honeymoon is over. I was wondering if they still have corpral punishment in the schools.
I think for their speaking and fluency lots of songs and read alongs on the overhead. But I take it you don't have one. Songs on cd with copies for the kids. Role playing, pantamime? I don't know I am just throwing somethings out.
Sara you should go and reorgainze their school, it is clear you and Christina know what you are doing.
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Hi Sara,
Don't even get me started on reorganizing schools! I believe you are right. Kids need a strong foundation for language in primary grades. Hopefully since you are in the middle (sort of) you can have a strong impact.
Are you doing community circle like you used to? It's so good to let them speak informally as often as your schedule will allow so that they feel invited to speak even if they don't know the academic concept.
Good luck with all of that!
Andrea
Yeah!!!! Sara will save the school. You can do it. I belive in you. They neve knew what an asset they were getting when they found you.
It is great that the kids learn English from people who cannot really speak it themselves, but hey at least they try. Remember the book I read about the teacher who taught in China and she said the other teachers did not even know English at all and were supposed to be teaching them English, so this is way better than that and look at how successful China is; maybe Honduras will the next big thing.
What kinds of things are the kids there interested in? like Games, TV shows, music, other stuff?
I enjoy reading your website! That heat sounds unbearable. How are the insects? Huge?
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