Monday, July 5, 2010

School in Oropesa

I now work at the school in Oropesa every day from 9-1, teaching 4rth graders and absolutely love it! This is the most disorganized school I have ever seen, with kids constantly running, fighitng, playing, screaming. . . today was a pretty typical crazy day at the school. I arrived at 9:00, which is actually already half an hour late. No surprise that the teacher was not in the room and the kids were just cleaning from last weeks crazy activities- which included spending a day making an oven out of stones to cook potatoes in. Then, my teacher called me to come with her to a large meeting room with all the other teachers where a few students served us bread and mate. Seriously every day the teachers have random meetings or activities like this that make them just leave their class to fend for themselves. I found out next that I was switching to another fourth grade classroom. I never know what I am teaching until I am actually starting- like today I asked, "Ok but what do you want me to teach today?" And the teacher asked her class what they wanted to do. Of course they wanted art- one thing I am no good at! Since I knew I had practically the whole day to teach what I wanted, we started with music and then did art. I'm teaching the scale and notes with Do, Re, Mi. . . in Spanish with motions and all. Then we did art which consisted of drawing a guitar, copying the scale, and drawing pictures from the song- I love planning on the spot and stumbling through my rough Spanish explanations :P After I finished with this class, I moved and taught the same lesson with the fourth grade class next door. Then we ate MORE potatoes from those stone ovens that they made. As we ate our potatoes, I looked out and in the center basketball court area, there was music blaring and all the students watching people dancing. Apparently tomorrow is the day of the teacher, so we were celebrating- another reason to not have school. . .
The funniest part about the school is that the teachers all just leave randomly throughout the day, sometimes for an hour or more at a time. When that happens, I just get up and make up a lesson about something. Sometimes I have major problems with the students hitting, fighting, yelling, and running around when I'm trying to teach something ( any great discipline advice?). But often they are excited enough about learning something like music or english that they are relatively well behaved.
At the end of the day, or during recess, a bunch of the girls all crowd around me and ask questions about my family, the U.S., English words, etc. One student ask me what year it is in the U.S. right now =)
Often after school I try to find one of the boys from the orphanage and we walk the 15 minute walk jumping over ditches, through fields, and passing all the motor cars, bulls and donkeys to get to Azul Wasi where I spend hte afternoon helping with homework, playing Uno, or playing soccer.

I need random song ideas to do with my class. the best are simple ones that teach english- like Head and shoulders, knees and toes is perfect! The school is Catholic, so they can be Christian- like Open the Eyes of my heart is good.

1 comment:

  1. haha me gusta!! Que ano es en los estados unidos?? Uhmmm, el mismo como Peru!

    I'm glad you're enjoying it more and I hope it gets less chaotic for you! I don't really have any good song ideas (Clap your hands or the Hokey Pokey?? haha!) or discipline ideas since I've never really taught anything. I suppose as long as they know you won't put up with bad behavior you'll be okay... but like you said, having them enthusiastic about what they're learning is fantastic because then they are motivated to pay attention!

    Miss you chica!!
    Caitlin

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