Field trip #2 - The Dentist's office!

Dear family and friends,

Yesterday (Tuesday), I went on another field trip with my students - this time to the dentist's office! We have been learning about teeth health as part of our expedition, so it fit in well. Except the unexpected 30-40 minute wait in the dentist's office (they wouldn't have lasted much longer, but I had enough coloring pages and books to tide them over!), it went really well. As you'll see from the pictures, some of them were pretty scared! Hopefully, if nothing else, they have less fear of going to the dentist!


Walking to the dentist office - it was about a 10 minute walk.

Roberly, Katherine, Layshah and Jenny waiting...

David, Pablo and Dorisbel - they all did so well in the waiting room!

Melisa, Katherine, Layshah and Pablo - I just love the faces in this one! Katherine especially was so afraid to go to the dentist's office! I think she was showing them a tool she uses to clean teeth here...or it might have been something to clean out cavities (that would make more sense judging from the looks on their faces!) - she spoke in Spanish, so I caught most, but not all of it!

I loved the expressions on Frenesi and Elaine's faces in this one - this was at the beginning of her presentation, and they were, as you can see, just a little apprehensive!

Elaine got to sit in the chair and have her teeth examined!

Singing a song about cleaning their teeth

Group shot with the dentist

Thanks for looking! Hope you're enjoying the beginning of the Christmas season!

Blessings,

Erica

Gardening, Kristen's visit and school pictures

Dear Family and Friends,

Here are some photos of November events so far!
A picture of my classroom building - the garden and pond in front was designed by the fourth grade class a few years ago!

I took the kids out in groups of four to work in the garden with Felo, the gardener. They were able to help him transplant lots of lettuce plants - the kids were all able to get some experience helping in the garden...and it was SO much easier than taking out a group of 17 first graders (when you're never sure what they're doing...catching bugs? Picking and eating lettuce? Stomping on the plants? And more possibilities that only a first grader could think of!!)

Here's a picture of all of the students gathered at the ampitheater for Revolution, a gathering we have every other Friday where students can present their work, sing, and just have a good time as a school!

A large view of the garden!

Showing how to plant the lettuce

My sister Kristen visited in November - she was able to talk to the kids about being a nurse and teach them about being healthy! The kids loved the stethoscope - I always love the faces Pablo makes in pictures!! They were so excited when they were able to hear their heart beat!

And with Melisa

The front of the house I live in - the front porch is where I usually end up if I'm spending time at the house - especially when it was SO hot for the first few months!

Jungla Taina - the playground!

The garden (designed and planted by the fourth graders several years ago) with the huge mango tree in front of my building (unfortunately, it doesn't produce mangoes anymore!)

The Cafe Taino - our cafeteria

The ampitheater - designed by the fifth grade class three years ago! It is where we meet every morning for flag time, and every other Friday for Revolution.

Thanks for reading and looking!

Blessings,

Erica

Random pictures

Hi everyone,

Here are just a few pictures of some of the fun things I've gotten to do on weekends - more to come later! Also, I'll be posting some pictures of the school grounds soon as well!

This is at Cabarete, a beach that we went to for a weekend in August - it was after the first two weeks of school, so it was an amazing time of rest and recuperation - at the time, I just needed to get away and completely forget about school for a few days!

This is what it looked like outside of the house I stayed in at Cabarete - it was an amazing place!

This is the upper Himenoa waterfall - I went there on a day hike one of the first weekends I was here - it is so amazingly beautiful!

On the left is Shanell, the 11-year-old that lives at my home-stay. The girl on the right is her friend Cynthia - this was taken the first or second night I was here.

In September, a large group of us went camping at Manabao (about a 45 minute taxi ride from Jarabacoa) - we hiked to another waterfall while there - this was the view from our tent!

There's just a few pictures - I have some friends here who have taken lots of pictures that I plan on getting and posting later!

Thanks for reading!

Blessings,

Erica

October

Just wanted to write a post to tell how everything has been going during October! I can't believe that we're already halfway through the month....

The kids have continued to do well - we had report cards this past Friday, and most of them are progressing well - I will be tutoring David, Jocabed, Denisse and Layshah in math (they struggle because they are just learning English), as well as Gelenita - Gelenita came to Doulos last year, and knows some English, but she just struggles to focus in whole-group lessons and it takes longer for her to grasp concepts.

The parents came after school to pick up report cards - it still surprises me how easy it is to work with parents here than in the States! I still feel like I need to be very careful what I say, and that I always need to be prepared to take a parents defense of their child, not matter what their child has done! But here, most parents are very supportive and trust my judgment and assessments. And scheduling tutoring is easy - I was prepared to ask them when would be best and work from there, but everyone told me to do tutoring whenever I need to and just send a note home on Monday to let them know when! That really illustrates the laid-back nature of this culture so well - and it's something I am gradually getting used to!! I'm so task-oriented and time-conscious…and it is so completely different here! Relationships are the most important, and time is something that you can’t control – you just flow with time and live life as things happen, rather than scheduling in advance.

My Spanish continues to improve slowly but surely – I can have a one-on-one conversation much more easily, and can understand a lot more, although I have such a long way to go. I started tutoring last week with Nelly, a woman from Colombia – I’m going to meet with her Monday and Wednesday for an hour each session. It is just so helpful to just practice talking (she speaks no English, but she’s tutored a lot of North Americans) and to have vocabulary and verbs that I can focus on learning. So, with that, plus talking to my host family and using Spanish in all those everyday situations (shopping, ordering at restaurants, etc.) I feel like I am definitely moving forward.

I’m getting more and more comfortable in the classroom as well. We start our expedition (an integrated 6-8 week unit all grades in the school do once a semester) in the next few weeks – mine is about Keeping Fit and Healthy. It’s a wide-open topic, so I’m enjoying planning ideas and activities for that – the week before last, we planted a garden which we will be tending as part of our expedition. The lettuce and cucumber has started to grow and the kids were very excited yesterday when we went outside to draw the plants and measure them!

If you receive my email updates, you heard my story about the garden planting fiasco – thankfully, it was at the end of the day on a Friday! A man named Felo (the grandparent of one of my students) came to help us plant, and the kids were extremely excited. I couldn’t communicate with Felo very well (and I kept accidentally calling him “pelo,” the Spanish word for hair!), and I wasn’t entirely sure what we were doing, so it was just about impossible to control the kids! They were running everywhere and a group of them was finding all sorts of animals (instead of helping plant the seeds) – and when Felo brought out the hose to water the plants, of course the students ran through it and two of them (Weidy and Pablo) completely soaked themselves with the hose. I considered stopping them…and then decided it was water and it was Friday – they’d be going home soon!

So, this time, I was extremely clear about how they were supposed to act – I wasn’t interested in having another out-of-control garden visit! It went much better – of course, a class always has at least one student (in mine, Roberly) who just has absolutely no impulse control – he stomped on a few of the plants – so, if we do any activities near the garden, it’s going to have to be with 2-3 students only – and he will not be one of them for awhile!

Teaching takes up a lot of my time, but I also have had time to build relationships with the other teachers here and do a lot of things around Jarabacoa – we took one beach trip last August and a camping trip in September – another one of my favorite things to do is to visit and swim in the gorgeous waterfalls.

Due to the craziness of the garden planting, I did not get to take any pictures - but, I plan on taking pictures of the students tending the garden and will post those soon! Thanks for reading!

Erica

Outdoor Education Week!

Hi family and friends,

Just wanted to update with a few pics of Outdoor Education week! First, Second and Third grade teamed up together to do three days this week about different habitats - during the morning we went on trips (to a field, to the pond in our on-campus garden, to the river), and during the afternoon we did projects! Here are a few pictures I took on Thursday and Friday, when we learned about the pond and the river.



One of the projects the kids did was a habitat box - they loved creating the finished product today!

Layshah, my new student that was moved up from Kindergarten - she was very proud of her box!

Elaine!
Dorisbel
At the river today, helping Jerrison, a second grade student, complete his River Scavenger Hunt (they were looking for things like rocks bigger than their fist, leaves bigger than their hand, sticks as long as their finger, etc. - we were practicing tally marks and counting by 5s!)

Down by the river bank with a group of students!

Painting their bird-feeder bottles in the afternoon!

I was pleasantly surprised by how well it went - it just started to get really messy near the end (completely covering your hands in paint is an excellent idea, according to first-graders - but, I should count my blessings - Troy, the third grade teacher, told me that two little girls started face painting while they were supposed to be finishing their bottles! Their response to him was , "But, Mr. Troy, you never told us we couldn't do that!" :) I made sure to emphasize that the paint was for the bottles only after hearing that story!)

The little boy on the left is Jesus Miguel...a very typical picture of him!

Jenny and a third grader, Priscilla, measuring plants at the pond! It was so neat to see how some of the third graders worked with and supported my first graders during our activity about word problems! This pond is part of a gorgeous park that is on our campus right in front of my classroom building.

Gathering around to talk about what they found at the pond - the building you can see in the top right is my classroom building - I promise to get up pictures of Doulos' campus sometime soon!

Hope you enjoyed the pictures and got a bit of a taste of what the week was like! It was so much fun, and I know the kids really enjoyed it - it's so amazing being in a school that encourages this type of exploration-based learning! It was so much fun to getting to know students from the second and third grade classes as well - they are a great group of kids! And, I must admit that I'm looking forward to a weekend to rest and recuperate! :) Thanks for reading!

Blessings,
Erica

Dear Friends and Family,

Once again, it's been too long since I have posted! I've included individual shots of each of the kids, and a few more pictures of my classroom. Pictures of the school and the kids doing activities for Outdoor Education Week will be coming late next week. Thanks for reading!

A view of my classroom during Friday free-time.
The front...

And another view!

This is Pablo - he's one of my mischievous boys! He loves to answer and talk...and has a pretty amazingly loud voice! :)

This is Jenny - she is one of my chatty/struggles to focus girls! She loves to participate in math - and today, she said a whole sentence in English! She was here last year, but she is slower to speak/remember English than some of the other kids.

This is Elaine - she's one of my highest students in math, and speaks really good English as well!

This is Jaquidys - she is the daughter of the high school math teacher here, and is one of my highest students - she loves to come visit after school and be my helper while her dad has planning time!

This is Dorisbel - she is new to Doulos this year, and came from the United States.

David is a new student to Doulos - he is very bright, and is learning so much English, although it is still a huge struggle for him! He told me at the beginning of the year, "Profe (what so many kids call me!), yo no hablo ingles -necesita hablar en Espanol!" (I don't speak English, you need to speak in Spanish!) - I tried to explain that he was here to learn English, and that's why I had to speak in that language! Not that he would understand me any better if I tried to speak my broken Spanish!

Jocabed - another student who is new to Doulos! She is very loving, but hard to engage in the classroom! I think she's starting to shut down because she cannot understand...I need to start some tutoring to help with that!

This is Melisa - she's the best English-speaker in my class. She's fluent in Creole (her family is Haitian), Spanish and English. She always raises her hand to answer every question - she'll make an answer up on the spot if she doesn't know!!

Denisse - she's another one of my new students. She's really been flourishing the last few weeks, and has made a lot of friends - she is really quick at memorizing, and I think she'll be one of my higher students in all subjects once she starts understanding English more!

Frenesi is a really sweet girl (sounds generic...but she really is!) - she was at Doulos last year, and know quite a lot of English, although she's usually pretty quiet!

Marky - he is one of my huggers! He was at Doulos last year, and he is extremely bright! His English keeps getting better and better as the year goes on.

Katherine - she is one of my artistic students - she always takes more time to color or draw pictures than other students, because she is spending so much time doing it perfectly! She is one of my better English-speakers.

So, that's a synopsis of the children in my class - I did get a new student, Layshah (she moved up from kindergarten) who I have not been able to take a picture of yet. That will be coming with my next round of pics! Thanks for looking!

Blessings,

Erica