1/14/11
Can’t believe it’s the end of week 2 already….holy cow this is going fast! Even though I ended the week pretty drained, I’m not ready to leave……oh boy.
What a crazy Friday. The kids were pretty naughty today for most of their teachers – it’s really frustrating to sit and watch them be so disrespectful and not really be able to do much about it because it’s not my class. Pulled out the teacher voice – and “the look” (lol) – several times today when I was the one in charge of them. It’s hard to because I know they are good kids and they know how to behave, they just know what teachers they can just walk all over and get away with it. I suppose it’s been good for me to see the importance of establishing structure and authority in my future classrooms – without it, even good kids can get out of control!
Taught my Bible lesson that got observed by my Taylor professor for a grade today – thank heaven my students were actually good! The lesson actually went really well – for the first half of it we talked about Proverbs, Solomon, and wisdom to introduce the unit they are beginning, and then we started in on the first unit topic, obedience. We discussed rules, why we have them, and why it is important to obey them, and then we did a really fun role-playing activity where student volunteers would act out a situation I gave to them – once showing disobedience in the situation, and once showing obedience. The students absolutely loved that – they all wanted to participate and the actors actually did very well….guess they understood the lesson! I got a good grade on it too, so despite my frustration with them for the rest of the day, I was pleased with how they behaved. Hopefully they will remember the lesson on Monday and apply it to their behavior in the classroom!
After school, all the Taylor teachers placed at Cuatro observed a “card giving ceremony and parenting seminar”. These ceremonies take place at the end of each quarter, and all parents are required to attend them. Parents are given their child’s report card, and then there are speakers that come in to discuss different parenting topics. Since these are mostly parents that live in the squatter villages, they often don’t have access to such information. Most of the parents don’t speak very much English, so the whole thing was in Tagalog or Taglish (mix of Tagalog and English)….we did pick out enough to know that the seminar topic was “Family Planning”...we got a few laughs out of it, but we understand the importance of doing this for the parents and the awesome thing these programs really are.
Was really feeling drained when we returned to the guesthouse, especially discouraged by the way my students had behaved today & feeling ineffective, despite the all energy I had spent on them. Spent about an hour up on the roof of the library with Jesus, receiving rest and encouragement from time in His Word and from the beautiful view. It was very refreshing to be filled up by Him during that time – I just felt like I had no more of myself left to give. I read through Galatians and Psalms 71 – the first talks about “not being weary in well doing” and the Psalm talks about praising God despite not feeling joy because we have hope that He will bring us out….how appropriate! He is sooooo good – I love how He always knows just what I need to hear!
After dinner, 7 of us ventured out again; we rode a trike down the road a ways (it’s very humerous trying to fit 7 people plus the driver on one of those things!) to a popular fast-food restaurant called Jollybee, just to get ice cream and say we had been there. Payed 10 pecos (about 25 cents)for a tiny little cup of ice cream…..got what I paid for I guess…haha But it was fun just sitting around talking with the girls for about an hour or so.
Busy weekend has been planned for us – tomorrow we are leaving at 10am for some kind of WWII memorial and then a mall that you barter at. To bed now - I’m looking forward to more than the 6 hours of sleep I’ve gotten the past two nights!
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