school is in session!

We made it through our first month of school!  The teachers are doing a great job, the kids are settling in, and learning is happening!  Praise God!  Because of the public school schedule, we won't be able to take a class of four-year-olds like we were hoping, but we have plenty of work focusing on kindergarten, first grade, and second grade!  Dalexi, Antonia, and Dudu have really stepped up to the task of everything that I have asked them to do - they've been willing to make lots of crazy changes to the way we do class, the way they teach, the way we discipline, everything.

An unexpected change to my job (already, I know...) is that I am once again teaching first grade.  This year I'm co-teaching with Dalexi.  We have 18 little guys; I teach phonics, reading, and handwriting through the Rod and Staff curriculum and workbooks for an hour each day.  Then I get them settled in their centers, supervise center time, and help them clean up.  Dalexi teaches the last 45 minutes of class, teaching math, helping the kids do their public school homework, and reading them a story.

I LOVE teaching.  I love being in the classroom with the kids.  I'll take teaching over office work any day, even on the days when the kids are out of control and I almost lose my voice by the end of class.  They have stolen my heart - all of them.  It's been fun to get to know their little personalities.  And we've managed to learn all 5 vowels so far!  I'm looking forward to starting reading groups during center time soon and being able to work more individually with them.

Please keep praying for us as we continue in the school year.  Pray for continued energy, wisdom, and creativity for us teachers.  Pray that God would open the minds of the kids to learn to read and their hearts to learn about him.  Pray that we will show God's love in every interaction we have with the kids.

Here is a link to the photo album of pictures from our first few days of school.

Here are my first graders.  So cute!  They bring me lots of joy with their precious smiles, hugs, and yelling "prooooofeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!" (that's really how they yell it!)  Remember to click on the picture to make it bigger.

Mom and Dad's visit!

For the second time since I moved to the DR, my parents came to visit me!  Unfortunately, their flight was cancelled due to the hurricane, but that wasn't about to stop them!  They rented a car, drove overnight to Pittsburgh, got new tickets, and got on a plane at 6:30 am, arriving in Puerto Plata only an hour after their cancelled flight would have arrived!  Now THAT's dedication.

We had a great visit together!  We stayed in a lovely condo in Cabarete (a treat for me!), went to my favorite beaches and restaurants, and went out to the village to see the school and shop at La Tienda.  We rode public transportation - they were great sports and even rode motorcycle taxis!  Dustin and I played a show the night they got in, and then led worship at church the next morning, so my parents got to hear me make lots of music while they were here!  It was fun to introduce them to my friends, show them the changes at the school, and of course sit on the beach or swim in the ocean and talk.  I am so grateful for my parents and for how they continue to love me, bless me, and guide me.  I'm grateful that they want to visit me here and that they want to understand my world - even trying to speak some Spanish!

Here are some pictures (the only ones, actually, that we took while they were here - oops!) from our snorkeling morning!  We had beautiful weather their entire trip!

extreme classroom makeover

The last two weeks have been prep weeks for the teachers at the Park Care Center.  We spent three days at a wonderful teacher workshop in Jarabacoa, then dove in to prep our rooms for the year.  I'm coordinating early education this year, which means I'm overseeing/responsible for 4 grades in 2 classrooms with 2 teachers and 2 teacher's aides.  We're totally recreating our early education program this year - new curriculum, new classroom setup, and new schedules that include circle time, read-alouds, and learning centers.  So we had a lot of work to do!  When we arrived at school last Thursday, our first day of prep, this is what the classrooms looked like:

The school carpenter was in the process of sawing apart, reinforcing, sanding, and varnishing two walls of bookshelves so that we could use them in the classrooms.  After finishing the bookshelves, he sawed the metal legs off some old desks, somehow got the desktops off, and built new desktops for them.  Those old desks are now tables for two in our preschool/kindergarten classroom!

This Thursday, the furniture was finally done, the whiteboards were hung, and the games and manipulatives were divided between the two classrooms.  We had a LOT of fun moving bookshelves and desks, decorating the rooms, and setting up the learning centers.  Preschool and kindergarten kids have art, books, phonics, construction, and "casita" (imagination/house) centers.  1st and 2nd graders have art, books, phonics/writing, construction, and math.  Now the rooms look like this - quite a difference!

The 1st and 2nd graders start school on Monday.  The classroom is ready, the teacher... will be fine.  He's feeling a little unsure right now, which is fine, so I'll spend lots of time in that classroom the first few days.  But I'm confident that once he gets into the routine of how the schedule works, how the lessons laid out in the curriculum book work, and how to use the discipline system we agreed on, he'll be more than fine!  The younger kids will start later in the week, as we still have lots of work to do to get the teachers familiar with the curriculum.  (For anyone interested, our 1st and 2nd graders are using Rod and Staff, and our little guys are using Estrellitas.)

Please keep praying for us as we start the school year!  I've talked with the teachers a lot about how we're learning how to do this together.  What works, we'll keep, and what doesn't work, we'll get rid of and try something else!  Pray for wisdom for me as I learn how to empower the teachers.  Praise God for the changes we're making, that my boss is on board with everything!  I'm so excited about what this year holds!