So Busy!

Today has been an extremely busy day. Suddenly there seems to be so much to do! First, this morning I got another new student. I'm officially up to 9!!! Then I've also been trying to figure out grad. school stuff and some of it has to be done by today if I want to take a class this fall! I've been trying to get all that stuff together in my spare time, but it's really challenging since I can't make phone calls and the electricity has been awful this afternoon! For about 30 minutes it was on and off literally every 5 minutes so I kept losing everything I was working on. I've also been busy because I'm trying to get stuff together for our after school clubs which start today. Heather and I are doing a Do-RAK (Do Random Acts of Kindness) Club. I think today we will just be making some thank you cards for the teachers and brainstorming some other things we could do as well.

Then tomorrow is a busy day to prepare for, I have all my classes, pre-k and all writing, so it's always a lot of preparation for Thursdays, plus it's Open House so I have to have a 20 minute presentation planned for the parents AND I just found out that I'm starting tutoring before tests and before anyone else. I'm going to be working with a 6th grader who speaks 0 English and has been highly overwhelmed and been crying in classes because he has no idea what's going on. I like that Marcelo thought to ask me, it totally will utalize my ESL certification and classes, but I have to think about what I will do with him tomorrow now too.

FINALLY, I'm officially the ERB test coordinator, so I'm going to have to start coordinating the writing tests for the whole school. It's a nice little resumé boost and I make an extra $1,200 per year which is also a nice little plus, but I've gotta get stuff going on that as well.

So in summary:
Things to do by today:

• Graduate school application and possibly start my courses
• After School Activities Materials and Planning

Things to do by tomorrow:

• Lessons/Materials for Pre-K and all my writing classes
• Plans for tutoring the new ESL 6th grader
• Open House presentation
• Set up the classroom for Open House and make it look pretty
• Get together materials/nametags/etc for our 9th and newest student

Things to do within the next two weeks:

• Plan and organize the ERB writing tests for the school.

Busy. Busy. Busy. Check out some pictures of how well my centers have been going.

This is how we make sure that there aren't too many people in one center. If they want to change where they are they must come to me so we can move their name to somewhere where there's room. It's worked pretty well, they understand better when they can visually see that there isn't room rather than me simply telling them there isn't enough room. The names of the centers are also velcro so that I can change what centers we have each day if I want.

Working in the colors center. I have some color board games, colored bean bags, some cool little see-through colored plastic lenses and that little kalaidascope.

The writing center. I have dry erase papers and books so they can practice tracing their letters. And I have regular large lined paper and pencils for them to write on. Kids love dry erase for some reason.

The shapes center. I use my pattern blocks to let them either build or use my animal patterns. (This will likely change when we learn more about shapes.)

Relaxing Weekend

Thank god I had a nice relaxing weekend, the kids were out of control and crazy today. I had 7 out of 8 and tomorrow they all will be there. For some reason they were just crazy today, it was like their parents fed them sugar for breakfast. Usually they're so good about using toys the right way, instead today they were throwing things and putting stuff down their shirts and just in general being crazy. Hopefully tomorrow is better. I got observed in my writing class and Marcelo was happy with it because the kids were engaged and writing. He likes that I start my classes with 10 minutes of writing about a topic they enjoy. (Trying to boost both their writing ability and their enjoyment of writing)

So this weekend was fun. On Friday we learned how to make arepas. Andreina came over for girls night with Heather, Erin, EMac and I to teach us. They're really easy once you learn how and they are delicious. They definitely might become a large staple of my diet here. I'll have to make them for everyone once I'm home.

Saturday morning we got up and got empanadas and juice. Andreina took us to the place we went this time and it was even more delicious than last week. I had one with chicken in it and it was amazing. And the fresh cantaloupe juice just made it even better. After breakfast Marcelo took us to an open air market which was awesome. Unfortunately they're only open in the mornings during the week and the weekends. They have tons of fresh food and I'm excited to go back to go shopping for tropical fruits. We got to try cachapa while we were there too. It's kind of like a corn pancake. It's made from fresh, sweet corn all ground up and made into a pancake. They eat it with local venezuelan cheese or with butter and it is excellent. I wish I could make that for everyone, but I don't think I can grind up fresh corn the way they do.

Saturday evening Heather and I went to Puerto La Cruz and stayed until Sunday night. Saturday we went to a bridal shop so Heather could try on some dresses then went out to dinner. It was delicious. We also went to a lounge type place for drinks. It was nice getting to go out on a Saturday night since Anaco tends to be so quiet.

Sunday was very relaxing, we spent all morning laying on the beach and swimming. Around 12-1ish we made the long trek to Plaza Mayor (about an hour walk) and had some food and did a bit of shopping there then walked back. It was a trek, but we didn't have much else to do so it kept us occupied. We left PLC at about 5:30ish so it was fairly late by the time we got back to Anaco on Sunday. Overall it was a lovely weekend, back to work unfortunately though.

I also just got the schedule for tutoring, I'll be tutoring for about 4 extra hours a week. I thought it would pay more than it does, I only get 90 Bs per hour, which is under $15. It'll be nice to have an extra $50 a week, but still, it's not as much as I'd thought I'd get to tutor.

Here's some pictures from this weekend:

 Rum costs 25 Bs here, thats about $3 for a whole bottle. We'll be drinking lots of piña coladas

Andreina teaching Erin how to make arepas

 EMac and I with our uncooked arepas.

Cooking my arepas. Mmmm

Walking onto the beach from our house in Lechería.

Our own private beach area.

Open outdoor shopping center. Plaza Mayor.

In Lechería there are all canals and houses with large boats parked outside them as seen here. I wish that was what we had, our own private boat.

Two Weeks Teaching, Three Weeks in Venezuela

How crazy is it that I've already been living in Venezuela for three weeks?? I can't believe how close we are to September already and how long I've been here, time has gone by so quickly since I've been busy with work. I'm excited for tomorrow, Heather and I will be going to spend the evening/night/most of Sunday in Puerto La Cruz at the beach house. We decided we are not nearly tan enough for living in a warm country and need some serious beach/relaxation time.

Tonight, one of the local teachers Andraina is taking us to the salon she goes to. She has a lazer hair removal appointment, which is apparently super cheap here. It is about 300 Bs per session (about $40 US) which is uber cheap, so a bunch of us are tagging along to see what its all about, maybe get our nails done to to celebrate two weeks of teaching (since this is also increadibly cheap.) Afterwards she is going to teach us how to make arepas and hang out with us for our Friday night girls wine/movie/snack night. She's very nice and taught here last year, even though she is only 21. Venezuelan high school stops at 11th grade and she skipped a year so she was only 16 when she went to college and therefore was teaching here at AIS by the time she was 19. Crazy!

School has been good this week, the kids are getting more comfortable and hence more rowdy, but thats okay, they still listen when they need to. Even the kids who don't know any English are starting to pick up on some of the things we do and say every day like being able to count and know their colors. My main priorities, at least until September, are to get these kids to know minimal words in English so communication is easier. I think everyone's lives (mine and the students) will become much more enjoyable once communication is simpler.

Today we made handprint butterflies and I made the kids tell me the names of the two colors they wanted to use in English. Even the kid who knows no English was able to understand me well enough to tell me his two colors in Spanish and then repeat me when I said them in English. This may seem super simple, but its a big improvement for him. Marcelo came into the classroom while I was doing handprint butterflies with them and asked me to go make sure the workers were setting up my writing classroom the way I want and he said he'd watch the kids. I advised him to read a story because he probably didn't want colorful fingerpaint all over his suit, which was bound to happen if I let him take over what I was doing. It was funny to come back and see my boss sitting pretzel style on the carpet with all the kids listening to him read. The kids loved showing everyone their butterflies when they left school today. It was one of the first things they've taken home (I needed some decorations for the classroom first... lol)

Yesterday we had another "surprise" visitor. We came in from recess and there was quite a large spider in the middle of the carpet. The kids (who are obviously used to all the creatures) screamed a little but crowded around looking at it and began singing the itsy bisty spider. It was adorable to here them sing, but the spider was definitely not itsy bisty... They wouldn't let me kill it so I had to captuer it and let it go outside. Being in South America always seems to make me get over any fear of bugs I may have.

Blurry picture of our visiting spider that I had to capture. You can't tell, but he was bigger than any spider I've seen in the state.

My kids love to swing. They can say "push me please" in English because I refust to do it anymore unless they say it in English. Before they figured out what the phrase was this was the outcome, everyone pushing each other. They much prefer me to do it though, and so do I honestly, it results in less arguing.

They love these little fish counters that I have, but they use them more to play with then count so I made up little fishbowl cards that each have a number in them. Now if they play with the fish they need to count how many fish they are puting in the bowl so it matches the number so their tank doesn't get too crowded.

Very proud to see these three playing the color game without my supervision and without any arguing. It's a simple game, but taking turns is a hard thing to do in preschool.

B is for Binoculars and Birdwatching

Today we did more with the letter Bb. We learned that birds and binocular start with the letter b.

It was fun to get the to see the kids running around with their binoculars. They really enjoyed birdwatching and it was a good way to practice colors. Every time the kids saw a bird they had to tell me what color it was and we'd mark it on a sheet of paper. After about 5 minutes the kids didn't want to mark anything on paper and just wanted to use the binoculars to look at birds; which was fine with me since they were still telling me what color the bird was. Even if they usually speak in Spanish at least they know their colors in English. One little girl (Michelle) ran to another little boy (Sebastian) and said "yo vi un pajaro BLUE!" This means I saw a blue bird, even if the rest is in Spanish, I was pretty happy to hear her use at least one English word while talking to her friend. It's nice, even if they only speak in Spanish, my Spanish is getting better again so I can for the most part understand everything they say to me.Which is mainly, "I need to use the bathroom," "push me on the swing," "he/she hit me/took my toy," and "can we play on the playground?"

Earlier in the day the kids learned how to play a color game. The teacher before me had ordered lots of cool games, but I didn't put them out because I didn't want all the kids losing pieces and ruining them. I'm slowly starting to introduce the games to the kids. Today they learned a color matching game and I will now leave that out as an option for center time.

After Birdwatching with Binoculars, we read some books for SSR like we do every day. They are getting much better about sitting quietly for 10-15 minutes and looking at books. I do wish we had more books for them to look at though, the classroom library is pretty small and the books are really falling apart. I'm trying to create a library of printable books that they've colored in for them to use as well, this takes a little bit of time though.

Over all it's been a good day. I'm tired though, we have a meeting today after school (the third one this week...) We also have open house on August 30th so I'm trying to get things ready for that as well.. busy busy busy. Maybe Puerto La Cruz to hang out on the beach this weekend?

Michelle and Sebastian crafting their binoculars

Kenvi looking through his binoculars

Going bird watching outside

I only had 5 kids in class today

Running towards or away from birds. We did find an iguana which I had to try and keep them from trying to catch. I wish the iguanas were more scared of people, the kids can get close enough to touch them before they move...

Learning how to play our new color game

Sebastian and Michelle were so cute reading together. She "read" him the spot story. In English every page says "Where is Spot? Is he in here?" and you lift up a flap and another animals says no. She read it in Spanish saying "Ha visto mi doggy?" "Nooo." Which when translated from her Spanish/English mix means "Have you seen my doggy?"

Weekend and Second Week

I knew I wasn't going to be able to keep this as updated as I had been... but here's what we did this weekend. Friday Erin, Heather, EMak and I had another girls night with some wine and snacks. We made taqueños, which are sort of like mozerella sticks, but they are wrapped in dough instead of bread crumbs. They are delicious. A great snack for eating while watching a movie. It was also EMak's birthday so we had some ice cream cake too. We went to bed early because the next day was Puerto La Cruz

Saturday morning we woke up early and all the teachers went to go see the beach house that we will be renting in Puerto La Cruz. It is awesome, multiple stories, four bedrooms and right on the water. We spent the day walking around PLC and getting to know the area. Later that night when we got back to Anaco we went out with a friend we made who used to go to AIS, Arquimedes, to a party close to the school. It was awesome to get out of campus and meet more people. A lot of his friends had went to AIS when they were younger or studied in the United States so almost everyone spoke English pretty well, it was lots of fun.

The next morning Arquimedes took us to his house and his mom made us all arepas. If you don't know what an arepa is, google it, they're delicious. It was so nice to be in a more homey setting for a little while and get a homecooked meal. My pb&j sandwiches, yogurt and pasta are nothing in comparison to homemade arepas. Arqui goes back to school in the USA this week, so we're going to have to find some new locals to make us food, at least until December when he graduates.

We're now onto the second week of school which is going well. I still don't have all my kids, two are on vacation, but I was also informed that there is another family looking to send their kids here. That would mean another four year old for me if they choose AIS. In total then, there would be 9, that's a lot of four year olds.

Pre-k is going awesome, my room is starting to look cute. I have work the kids have done hanging up and that makes me happy. It's starting to look like we actually do something in here. Marcelo came in and observed the class today for about 5-10 minutes. He came in when we were tracing letters Bs. (our letter of the week) The kids were all sitting nicely at their desks and doing their work. We talked after class today and he was pleased with how my class is going. He said the kids all seem happy and it looks productive. He said he was expecting to come in and see Arya (one of my more energetic children) running around, and was pleasantly surprised to find her sitting and writing with everyone else.

I wish I could say the writing classes were as successful as pre-school. The kids here really are AWFUL writers, and they try to whine and complain to get out of writing ALL THE TIME. It's a struggle to get them to write and I'm currently annoyed that no one has ever told the 3rd and 4th graders that a story is not just one paragraph. They drafted a story for me with a graphic organizer last week, and this week I said we were going to expand and use each section of the organizer as a paragraph. They looked at me in shock. They were completely in awe that I wanted them to write multiple paragraphs for one story that they already deemed "done." The kids are nice and well-behaved, they just have such minimal writing abilities that it's unbelievable. We have a long way to go.

Time to get back to planning. Tomorrow pre-k will be using their crafted Binoculars to go Birdwatching in honor of the letter Bb.

Here's a few pictures from this past weekend/the beginning of this week.

 

The entrance to the gated community that our house is in in Puerto La Cruz.

 

The apartment complexes in our gated community by the beach.

 

First floor living room area of our beach house.

 

 Our private beach. This is more or less the backyard of our house. It's two steps away.

 Our gorgeous private beach on the Caribbean. It was cloudy this weekend, can't wait to get a sunny day to enjoy it!

 My classroom finally has some kid decorations. Apple a's and Butterfly B's (you can't see from the picture but those butterflies are also sparkly, yes I attempted glitter with the 4-year-olds)

 

Some more classroom decorations. Our hand print apple trees. And you can see the chicka chicka boom boom tree in the background with our letters A and B that we've learned so far. The kids LOVE the chicka chicka boom boom song and walk around singing it. 

 

Just because I thought this is a funny picture of three of my girls building. Yes, my preschool girls have lots of sass when they build giant towers. 

Week One = Done!

I have officially made it through the first week of school! I'm very happy that it is Friday. I think tonight  us teachers are going to relax together, make some food, drink some wine and watch movies. Everyone is pretty tired. Tomorrow we're going to be leaving early to go to Puerto la Cruz. We will be taken around the city and get to see the house that we will be living in. Hopefully tomorrow night we'll be able to go out and have some fun too. 

This week in preschool we've been trying to get a routine down and we've been working with the letter A. We've made a lot of apple themed things and I'm definitely perfected my crafting skills. Thank you Chi Omega and being in a sorority for giving me a couple years to become and awesome crafter before starting to teach preschool. Those have been some valuable skills.

We made "a apples" which are in an earlier post. We sliced an apple in half and made prints and used our finger prints to make ants. Then today we had "Finger-painting Friday" and used our handprints to make apple trees. The kids LOVE painting, but its extremely messy so we're working on following directions and only painting in small groups right now. We had a lot of green hands and green on the tables today. 

We've also had centers every day. the kids can either build in my "construction zone," play with whatever activity I put out on the carpet, or sit at a table and work on writing with me using dry erase markers. They have short attention spans and tend to just go from one thing to the next pretty quickly, but that's fine as long as they're in one of those places. 

I have lots of pictures to put up today and tomorrow I'll have even more from Puerto la Cruz

Painting our hands green and putting leaves on our tree. 

Michelle making some great leaves.

Our finished apple trees.

Kenvi and I working at the writing center

Marcel and Carol using shapes to make animals/insects/flowers on the carpet

Sebastian building. (This is his favorite thing to do and sits there building for all of center time)

Day 2 and the letter A

It's been two days of pre-k so far. Everything is going well. Today was even smoother than yesterday. I'm trying to get the children into a routine, it seems to be working pretty well. I just spoke with the pre-k3 teacher and she was shocked we had done anything academic already. I haven't done too much, but there's no point in wasting time. I'm sure we'll get plenty of fun, non-academic days, when the holidays start up.

A big portion of my day today was doing "letter A activities" The kids LOVE writing on the white board so I let them practice writing their letter A on the board, which they loved and I think I'll do with each letter. Tomorrow I'm going to let them write As outside with sidewalk chalk, I think. After working on the board we made apples out of the letter a. Anything involving glue is bound to be a mess with kids and be time consuming, but they came out well and I'm happy to have some work to hang up in the classroom.

Tomorrow I will be getting another student. He doesn't speak any English either. When my two other children get back from vacation I will have a total of 8 four-year-olds every day. This is a much larger group then I was originally told, but I am definitely looking forward to it!

 My kids very excited to be holding up their "a" apples.

I tried to get them to hold them so I'd be able to see them. They came out pretty well! I was excited for the first craft of the year how well they did!

First Day of School!

Today I had my first day of school. From 8-12 I teach pre-k (age 4). It's definitely a challenge to keep them occupied for four hours. Four year olds can't stay concentrated on one task for any longer than 10-15 minutes, so we have A LOT of moving around. Everything feels a little chaotic because my student teaching was second graders who were used to school already.

What makes it even more difficult is that all of my students are ESL. My Spanish is for sure helping me, but not all of my students speak Spanish either. I have a little girl who just moved here from India, she speaks Hindi. The chaos of having 4 year olds in classroom and everyone speaking a combination of three languages is interesting.

Currently, I'm just trying to establish a routine. My routine looks something like this: coming in to coloring in the morning, then circle time, calendar, outside/PE, snack, letter of the week work, read aloud, centers, home. I'm sure that once students understand the routine they will begin to pick up more English. It is also difficult for them because, as our director said, they have been speaking Spanish/other languages all summer and it's been two months since they've used their English.

In the afternoons I teach writing. I had all my classes write me a letter telling me about themselves. I told them they could ask me questions and I'd write back to them. I'm hoping to keep this going all year so that the students are encouraged to write more and can see the use and value of writing. For my 5th graders (They learn descriptive writing) I read them part of Harry Potter where there are dragons described in detail. I then had them write a description of a made up creature and switch papers with a friend. Their friend had to try and draw the creature from the description. It was funny to see how when there wasn't enough description the other person couldn't draw the creature and it led into a good discussion on the importance of writing descriptively. For my 3rd and 4th graders (who are learning narrative writing) I made them each choose three different colored blocks. I had a chart so that each color corresponded to a person, place and thing. So, depending on what colors they chose, they all had different characters, settings and objects to write a story from.The kids thought it was hilarious because they'd end up with with a combination of Justin Beiber, China and super hero; or Harry Potter, Anaco and banana; or Selena Gomez, Canada and guitar.

Overall, it was a tiring but good day. Looking forward to tomorrow.

My classroom all set up. Except those aren't my real tables, they're temporary until my circle tables come back. (Lucky I had tables, some classrooms didn't have any...)

5 out of my 7 students. 2 weren't here today, I was told this was normal, that when kids are young the parents often continue vacation a little longer than usual.

Tuesday August 7, 2012

So now I've had two days of "work." We've had meetings in the morning and afternoon and my evenings have been spent trying to get my classroom set up. To fill everyone in on what I'm doing exactly, I'm teaching pre-k 4 (pre-school for the four year olds) and I'm the writing instructor for the elementary school. Originally, I was supposed to be the writing instructor for the whole school, but the director said the girl who did it last year was horribly overwhelmed so now the language arts high school teacher does writing for high school and middle school.

So... reasons why they need a writing teacher: the kids are bad at writing, like really bad. At the beginning of last year our students took the ERB writing tests, they scored in the 20th percentile, at the end of last year they were at the 40th percentile, we're trying to bring it up. The high school writing teacher and myself are the ERB test coordinators, so we have to plan and administer these tests and inform all the other teachers to help the students prepare for them. From the sound of things I will have my work cut out for me. I'll be running around with 4 year olds for four hours in the morning, then going to teach and run this writing program in the afternoons.

Currently, I'm in my classroom (because my house still does not have functioning internet and now the tv is down too). I've been trying to get everything set up which is pretty challenging, its hard to organize such a small room, and I'm trying to get all the spiders out of it too. Heres some before/after pictures:

This was my craft closest shortly after I opened it. (I had already kinda emptied off the first two shelves)

This was my organizational abilities with it a couple hours later

Before classroom

Before classroom

Kinda half way through... 

So, it's taking a while to get stuff done, I'm going to be here late pretty much every night, but thats okay since I now have no internet or tv at my house. I also found out I have a new student from India, so I'll now have 7 students instead of 6. 

Day One

We're already almost done with our first 24 hours here at the Anzoátegui International School. I'm feeling very comfortable here and already excited that this is going to be the weather I will be enjoying all year. The internet in my house isn't working, but it's fine because I get the joy of writing this in a shaded pavilion outside with a glass of pear juice. Here's a picture of my view:

It's absolutely gorgeous here and we were taken around and to lunch by our director, Marcelo, this morning. Anaco is a very small city with not too much to do. We got to see the super market and shopping mall, both of which are about a mile away from our school. We were advised not to walk because people drive "like madmen." There are no sidewalks and Marcelo informed us that even if there were, it would not be unlikely for a car to drive up on the curb to get around another car. We should take taxis everywhere. We were also told to call the taxis whose numbers will be given to us as opposed to taken any random one. A "taxi" in Anaco is a car with a small sticker that says "taxi" on the window. These stickers can be purchased anywhere for a few dollars. Anyone can be a taxi driver. 

The cost of everything here is fairly reasonable. We can get taxis to the grocery store/shopping center for $4 (US) which if split between two people is only two dollars a person. Completely reasonable. Venezuela would be pretty expensive, even for an American, because of inflation, if you were to exchange money at a legal rate. "Legally" we should get about 4.5 bolívares for 1 US dollar, but through the black market and the help of our director/students parents we get the much more common (and technically illegal) rate of 8.5 bolívares per US dollar. Here are what my bolívares look like:

It seems pretty standard for things to be done "illegally" here. Going through customs at the airport they didn't even look at what everyone came in with because its so normal for rich Venezuelans to fly to Miami, buy a ton of stuff, then come back to Venezuela. There's also almost no cops anywhere. Marcelo said that if you police ever decide to stop you for anything it is completely normal just to give them a couple hundred bolivares. He said Venezuelans think that American legal systems are too harsh and that you end up being punished for years for what they consider a minor infraction. They rather just pay a fine to the cops right then and be done with it. 

In the afternoon we went around taking pictures of the campus and began setting up classrooms a little bit. Below are some pictures of what the campus looks like. It's very gated with security and has iguanas every, which I think is awesome. Here's some pictures of the campus: 

Awesome iguana

The playground for daycare/pre-k/k

The inside of the school

Eventually I will have a post about where I am living, but my current house is not permanent. I will be moving to the apartments they are building right next to my current house. I was told I'd move in about a week, I doubt they'll be done by then. It is South America. Here is the gist of my current situation:

This is the house that I am currently living in.

This will be my lovely two bedroom apartment once it's done.

So, basically, Venezuela is awesome. Life here is great so far. I'm really enjoying living here and can't wait to start teaching/traveling. Meetings/classroom set up start tomorrow at 7:30 am and we're heading to Puerta la Cruz this Saturday for a nice day of Caribbean beaches and shopping. #LivingTheLife