Challenges

I made it! Five full days in a row! Boy am I exhausted. On Thursday I woke up for a 5:45 am run which I thought would make me very alert, but it only made me REALLY tired. I was dragging the whole day at school and getting a major headache. At the end of the day we had gym and I could hardly move my head. The kids were really getting to me. They ask sooo many questions because they are eager to learn but sometimes it's a bit overwhelming. It's physically difficult to get to the students because the room is so small and the desks and tables are so close to one another that I often stumble or trip to get to a student. By nature I am very clumsy, but really, it's not easy. The lack of resources is also something I am struggling with. Back home, I am so used to have teacher's manuals, workbooks, curriculum guides and the like. Here my teacher tries to find some activity books and the class has some workbooks for language arts and science but that's pretty much it. The books they do have may be written in too. Teaching here has really made me appreciate what I have back home. I remember becoming upset with one of the copier machines in my last placement. I had to wait until another teacher was done with another machine until I got to make my copies which caused me to be late. Here in PG, one day I was going to make copies of a sheet the students were to do. Well... the one copy machine broke and it will not be prepared for awhile because they have to get a part shipped in. I've had to have the students copy down the homework or else make prints at our house. Even then I can't use much ink so I have to make the students work in pairs. Planning is defnitely a lot of work here! I am also supposed to write a lesson plan for every lesson I teach. This has prevented me from doing pretty much anything besides homework. It's nice to stay busy but I really want to experience PG too. Maybe it will get easier though...

On Friday my cooperting teacher had a workshop in Belize City. They do not have substiute teachers here so I ended up teaching the whole class for the entire day. It was not easy! I had a lot planned which was good but the students were definitely acting up a bit. At one point I became so frustrated that I put a kid in the corner. That definitely goes beyond all of my values of classroom management. I felt so bad but desperate times called for desperate measures. After I had him write a "fix-it" note, but he only wrote:

What I did: pushing
How I will stop it: Stop it.

I vented about my day to some local teachers and they said that what I did was not bad at all. Some teachers swat the kids or make them write really long sentences. All of this is taking a lot of adjusting to. I do not want to pick up on any bad habits, but I suppose I will have to see what works here in the classroom while still instilling my values. I have a whole new appreciation for the teachers this week!

Friday night we went to a Belizean cultural pageant. It was neat. There were dancers of  the Creole, Garifuna, Mestizo, Maya and East Indian culture. Our host dad, Paul was the host of the ceremony. He did a dance at the end and we were all cheering for him! The one thing that annoyed me was the behavior of the audience. Everyone was talking as the speaker was talking. I know they were excited but it was becoming disrepectful. Overall, it was a neat performance.

The weather has actually been a bit chilly! Last night I slept with a sweatshirt on even. My students were all complaining about the cold, but it felt real nice to me!