During the first quarter of the school year I learned the realities of my job, and fell in love with my students. During the second quarter I continued to love my job, but also found myself covering many classes in the primary school due to the beginning of vacation season for teachers and other reasons. The 3rd quarter of school ended on August 18; and I have learned that you never know what will come when working at Escuela San Pedro.
I began the quarter by taking a wonderful vacation back to the states to visit family and friends. The lovely summer vol Rose covered my classes with great care, and for that I am ever grateful. Upon my return we celebrated day of the lempira, a truly fun cultural holiday that celebrated the native Honduran indigenous hero, Lempira. The next week Keenan and Ted sadly had to leave early from the finca, and I became the middle school math teacher in addition to special ed teacher. During this time I also helped to cover health, computers, and kindergarden to help cover others’ vacations. The quarter finally came to a close mid August, and most all teachers came back from vacation.
Special Ed continued to prove the highlight of my day, but the middle schoolers are growing on me daily. I watched my kids learn cursive, measurement conversions, clocks, and geometric area formulas. I also watched many of them greatly improve their writing and reading skills. I was especially impressed my Jessica’s amazing science essay and Magdalena’s several occasions where she almost read an entire book all by herself.
Middle school math proved a new adventure in every sense of the word. I found joy in the job in that it awoke my inner math nerd and allowed me to work with a really fun group of kids I otherwise did not get to work with. Their hormonal reactions to my every move and great fear of being discovered as someone who cares about their grades proved greatly entertaining. While many moments have stuck out to me, these three are some of my favorites.
First, there is no set classroom for math, so I push around a little cart with all my books and notes from classroom to classroom. After fellow volunteer Nils one day saw me rushed and pushed my cart over to the classroom for me, the teenage boys felt inspired. Several of them now find it quite fun to push my cart around for me from class to class when they are bored or feel like entertaining their class. They seem to think this will win them extra points or a free homework pass one day. While mistaken, they still prove wonderful Don Quijote like “caballeros” during my rush between classes.
Second, one day when I was unlocking all the doors, I found a large blue crab about the size of my hand guarding the padlock to the gate in front of the door to the computer lab. My initial reaction was to laugh. Upon hearing my laughter, four boys from 7th and 8th grade heroically arrived to “save the day.” They first tried to draw the crab out with their hands as decoys, after many almost pinches, Omar decided to bring a stick to draw it out. While he did so Juan Carlos grabbed my keys and quickly opened the pad lock. Then after one swept the crab out of the space in front of the door, Manuel kicked the crab into space as if trying to make the goal to win the world cup for Honduras. The fireworks display of its insides simply made me smile. All I could do was laugh and think “only in Honduras.”
Lastly, I found great satisfaction when all of my kids passed their quarter exam with me. I realized that I was not just providing material for all the girls gossip, or creating new opportunities for the boys to play jokes, but that they were actually learning, and some even enjoying themselves a bit.
I have no idea what the 4th quarter will bring, but I am truly grateful for having experienced, and finished this truly unpredictable third quarter.
No comments:
Post a Comment