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
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!
