Tuesday, December 14, 2010
Tis the Season
I love Christmas, so there might be a lot of Christmas blogs this year... this one is legit, though. Another exciting feature of the first grade Christmas party was the Santa hat I found at the grocery store down the street. It turned into a pretty cute photo shoot with my kids - gotta love their adorable smiles! (Don't forget to click on the picture to make it bigger!)
Technology
To set the stage: I don't exactly consider myself to be a "techie" person. When I was in Milwaukee in October, more than one high schooler asked me why I still have a flip phone. My laptop is a hand-me-down Dell. (though I dream of the day when I, too, can own a macbook!) My digital camera is 5 1/2 years old - ancient by today's standards. And my ipod. My ipod is 3 1/2 years old, 30 gig, has a giant line across the screen, some scratches - it's nothing fancy, but it lets me take my music with me.
So last week, I threw my first graders a Christmas party. No party is complete without music, so I brought my ipod and my speakers, which I bought at 5Below (aka they're cheap), to school. The following pictures and videos chronicle my kids' discovery of the ipod - a magical device that plays music that you can't hear without two other magical devices known as speakers.
And now, to top it all off, TWO videos (because I love you so much and am feeling patient with the internet)!
Alicia, then Nairoby, and finally even Wander, who has a speaker in his other ear, take turns discovering that you can't physically "listen" to the ipod.
Wander and Monica sing along to "Dame tus Ojos" by Marcela Gandara. They obviously don't know very many of the words... Wander discovers that pressing a button makes the ipod screen light up. He says to me, "Mira! Es yo que lo pone! ... Yo sabe!" And then returns to singing. He has no idea how many grammatical errors he has just made - none of my kids do. This is a pretty good example of what I do all day: a child tells me "Yo sabe!" and I reply, "Yo SE." Wander should have said, "Mira! Soy yo que lo puse! Yo se!" But he didn't. So as I teach my kids to read, I am teaching them Spanish along the way... now that's a scary thought!
I hope you enjoyed my kids - they crack me up all the time!
So last week, I threw my first graders a Christmas party. No party is complete without music, so I brought my ipod and my speakers, which I bought at 5Below (aka they're cheap), to school. The following pictures and videos chronicle my kids' discovery of the ipod - a magical device that plays music that you can't hear without two other magical devices known as speakers.
 |
| Wander discovers the music comes from the speakers, not the ipod! |
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| My FAVORITE!! He used the speakers as headphones for a solid 10 minutes. |
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| Monica and Nairoby take a turn - where IS the music coming from? |
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| Monica and Wander share nicely. Wander looks like an ipod pro. |
Alicia, then Nairoby, and finally even Wander, who has a speaker in his other ear, take turns discovering that you can't physically "listen" to the ipod.
Wander and Monica sing along to "Dame tus Ojos" by Marcela Gandara. They obviously don't know very many of the words... Wander discovers that pressing a button makes the ipod screen light up. He says to me, "Mira! Es yo que lo pone! ... Yo sabe!" And then returns to singing. He has no idea how many grammatical errors he has just made - none of my kids do. This is a pretty good example of what I do all day: a child tells me "Yo sabe!" and I reply, "Yo SE." Wander should have said, "Mira! Soy yo que lo puse! Yo se!" But he didn't. So as I teach my kids to read, I am teaching them Spanish along the way... now that's a scary thought!
I hope you enjoyed my kids - they crack me up all the time!
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
O Christmas Tree
We've been teaching our students the Christmas story over the past few weeks, and it never ceases to amaze me. The Logos - the supposedly unknowable force that holds the universe together - became human and intimately knowable. The Word that created the universe chose to bear the pain and debt of my sin in a physical body. The Incarnation really is a great mystery. I hope that I show that to my kids this week. Jesus was born as a baby so that we might believe in him and have the right to be children of God. Amen.
Friday, November 26, 2010
why I listen to Corelli
Lately I have been listening to a lot of early, Baroque, and early Classical music. Mozart, Corelli, Byrd, Bach... I have avoided Brahms and his Romantic contemporaries. So I thought I would share with you all (whoever that is that reads my blog!) a quote by Madeleine L'Engle from her book Walking on Water:
"Wagner is fine if the world around one is stable. But when the world is, indeed, in chaos, then an affirmation of cosmos becomes essential."
I find that often in this country, in this life, the world is in chaos. So I listen to music that seems to put the pieces back together. I know (pardon my music-nerdness) that at the end of every four bars, Mozart will give me a nice cadence. I can predict where a Bach piece will go next. There are few surprises; there is a lot of stability and familiarity. There's something comfortable and soothing about listening to a Corelli trio concerto after a long day of feeling incompetent in this culture and language. I know the language of the music. So maybe, in a way, this "affirmation of cosmos" music has become a safe place from which I adventure out into the Wagnerian, Brahmsian, and sometimes even Glass-ian world in which I live.
Food for thought.
"Wagner is fine if the world around one is stable. But when the world is, indeed, in chaos, then an affirmation of cosmos becomes essential."
I find that often in this country, in this life, the world is in chaos. So I listen to music that seems to put the pieces back together. I know (pardon my music-nerdness) that at the end of every four bars, Mozart will give me a nice cadence. I can predict where a Bach piece will go next. There are few surprises; there is a lot of stability and familiarity. There's something comfortable and soothing about listening to a Corelli trio concerto after a long day of feeling incompetent in this culture and language. I know the language of the music. So maybe, in a way, this "affirmation of cosmos" music has become a safe place from which I adventure out into the Wagnerian, Brahmsian, and sometimes even Glass-ian world in which I live.
Food for thought.
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Teaching First Grade
(Warning: this is a long post. But read it - it's worth it! And there's a picture if you can make it to the end...)
This year I became a first grade teacher. Funny, right? That's what I thought, too, when my boss first told me. I have 8 six-year-olds; they are the students the normal first grade teacher labeled as stupid or badly behaved, so they gave them to me! Also funny, right? These kids are at a kindergarten level, but they are NOT stupid. Most of them learn quickly and LOVE school - they're just the kids that couldn't learn by the Dominican system, which is copying words off the blackboard into your notebook all day. I'm pretty sure my kids got the better end of the deal: in my class, we have circle time, read-alouds, centers, crafts, and LOTS of fun! Thanks to wonderful friends and family members with years of experience and lots of resources, I have an amazing "classroom" in a corner of the cafeteria. We play with magnetic letters, tangrams, lacing cards, puzzles, pocket charts, sorting games, watercolors, playdough, and LOTS of books! We are learning phonemic awareness, letter recognition, handwriting, about the calendar and the weather, and counting.
Has it been easy? Absolutely not. Has it been a source of joy? Absolutely. I'm pretty sure I learn more than my students every day. I got a lot of supplies, books, and advice in Chicago in October, and jumped in with both feet when I got back to the DR. It has been a crazy fall, but I am so grateful for the chance to teach these kids and show them that learning is fun and that they can be successful in school. I love that every morning I get greeted with hugs and "Buenos dias, profe!" I love that my students are friends! Here are some great successes, things my students have learned in the past 6 weeks:
Ok, time for "funny, right?" moment #3:
The first day I taught first grade, I had no resources, no schedule/structure, and no idea what I was doing. After class, I sat in the office with my journal, and God said, "Hey Emily, I think you're supposed to teach elementary school." To which I promptly replied, "Hey God, actually, I'm going to be a high school choir teacher, but thanks." End of conversation. The next day, God said, "Emily, seriously, you're going to be an elementary school teacher," and I said, "Um, no. Remember how I was a music major and love choir and am going to be a high school choir teacher? Yep, me too. Still what I'm going to do with my life." After about two weeks of this, I said to myself, "Maybe I really AM supposed to be an elementary school teacher... that's terrifying!" And I'm pretty sure God laughed a little.
So now I find myself in this position of being called to teach elementary school. I have discovered that I have a passion for making sure kids learn the essential skills they are supposed to learn in the first few years of school - basic literacy skills, math skills, behavioral and relational skills. I actually enjoy lesson planning, and I love reading books on teaching literacy - weird, right? And here's the kicker: I know without a doubt that there are kids in the United States who are missing out on these skills. It's not just kids in the 3rd world who don't learn to read. It's kids in North Philly, kids in DC, kids in inner cities across America. And it's kids whose parents can't read them stories before they go to bed, kids who use all their energy to survive, kids who fall asleep hungry. These kids live in the United States, not just the Dominican Republic, and they need teachers who will fight for them, teachers who will teach them to love learning.
Please be in prayer for me as I continue teaching these little guys. Pray for wisdom, creativity, patience, joy, love, and more wisdom! Also pray as I continue trying to figure out what God has for me and what my calling looks like.
So that's my story. If you've made it this far, you're a trooper! I wanted to tell it all at once so that from now on I can just talk about my class without having to give the backstory. To reward you for reading this far, here is the promised photo, plus some bonus! We did a class photo shoot the other day - have you ever tried to control 8 6-year-olds on top of a jungle gym?
In the "lineup" photo, L-R: Nairoby, Alicia, Monica, Wander, Keila, Ambiorix, Alidia, Cristina
Here's my "classroom": in the corner of the cafeteria (hence the plates of food on the table) with a tape square for them to sit on during circle time. That windowsill is my storage place during class where I keep all the stuff the kids aren't allowed to touch. The kids drew those self-portraits when we were learning our names - I think they're pretty cute.
This year I became a first grade teacher. Funny, right? That's what I thought, too, when my boss first told me. I have 8 six-year-olds; they are the students the normal first grade teacher labeled as stupid or badly behaved, so they gave them to me! Also funny, right? These kids are at a kindergarten level, but they are NOT stupid. Most of them learn quickly and LOVE school - they're just the kids that couldn't learn by the Dominican system, which is copying words off the blackboard into your notebook all day. I'm pretty sure my kids got the better end of the deal: in my class, we have circle time, read-alouds, centers, crafts, and LOTS of fun! Thanks to wonderful friends and family members with years of experience and lots of resources, I have an amazing "classroom" in a corner of the cafeteria. We play with magnetic letters, tangrams, lacing cards, puzzles, pocket charts, sorting games, watercolors, playdough, and LOTS of books! We are learning phonemic awareness, letter recognition, handwriting, about the calendar and the weather, and counting.
Has it been easy? Absolutely not. Has it been a source of joy? Absolutely. I'm pretty sure I learn more than my students every day. I got a lot of supplies, books, and advice in Chicago in October, and jumped in with both feet when I got back to the DR. It has been a crazy fall, but I am so grateful for the chance to teach these kids and show them that learning is fun and that they can be successful in school. I love that every morning I get greeted with hugs and "Buenos dias, profe!" I love that my students are friends! Here are some great successes, things my students have learned in the past 6 weeks:
- to recognize their names and their classmates' names
- to read a book by looking at the pictures
- to read, write, and hear the five vowels
- to track words (put a finger on each word as they read it) as they read repetitive sentences
- Green Eggs and Ham. They have literally learned it - memorized most of it!
- what rhyming words are (they also learned this one through Green Eggs and Ham!)
- to think creatively and logically (still working on this one) with puzzles and tangrams
- to work quietly in pairs during center time, and clean up after themselves
Ok, time for "funny, right?" moment #3:
The first day I taught first grade, I had no resources, no schedule/structure, and no idea what I was doing. After class, I sat in the office with my journal, and God said, "Hey Emily, I think you're supposed to teach elementary school." To which I promptly replied, "Hey God, actually, I'm going to be a high school choir teacher, but thanks." End of conversation. The next day, God said, "Emily, seriously, you're going to be an elementary school teacher," and I said, "Um, no. Remember how I was a music major and love choir and am going to be a high school choir teacher? Yep, me too. Still what I'm going to do with my life." After about two weeks of this, I said to myself, "Maybe I really AM supposed to be an elementary school teacher... that's terrifying!" And I'm pretty sure God laughed a little.
So now I find myself in this position of being called to teach elementary school. I have discovered that I have a passion for making sure kids learn the essential skills they are supposed to learn in the first few years of school - basic literacy skills, math skills, behavioral and relational skills. I actually enjoy lesson planning, and I love reading books on teaching literacy - weird, right? And here's the kicker: I know without a doubt that there are kids in the United States who are missing out on these skills. It's not just kids in the 3rd world who don't learn to read. It's kids in North Philly, kids in DC, kids in inner cities across America. And it's kids whose parents can't read them stories before they go to bed, kids who use all their energy to survive, kids who fall asleep hungry. These kids live in the United States, not just the Dominican Republic, and they need teachers who will fight for them, teachers who will teach them to love learning.
Please be in prayer for me as I continue teaching these little guys. Pray for wisdom, creativity, patience, joy, love, and more wisdom! Also pray as I continue trying to figure out what God has for me and what my calling looks like.
So that's my story. If you've made it this far, you're a trooper! I wanted to tell it all at once so that from now on I can just talk about my class without having to give the backstory. To reward you for reading this far, here is the promised photo, plus some bonus! We did a class photo shoot the other day - have you ever tried to control 8 6-year-olds on top of a jungle gym?
In the "lineup" photo, L-R: Nairoby, Alicia, Monica, Wander, Keila, Ambiorix, Alidia, Cristina
Here's my "classroom": in the corner of the cafeteria (hence the plates of food on the table) with a tape square for them to sit on during circle time. That windowsill is my storage place during class where I keep all the stuff the kids aren't allowed to touch. The kids drew those self-portraits when we were learning our names - I think they're pretty cute.
Saturday, October 23, 2010
Welcome, Brianna!
Since we found out that Jessi, the school nurse, was going to return to the US mid-September, I have been asking the Kids Alive directors to try to find a new missionary to come work at the Care Center. And they found someone! This is Brianna:
She has jumped right in and worked hard this week! We have been prepping our Christmas sponsorship project (that's what she's doing here - shaving crayons), and she weighed, measured, and de-wormed all the kids this week! She is wonderful. So much fun to be around, sweet, and a great coworker - I have really enjoyed showing her around and talking with her and watching her love the kids. She will be here until just before Christmas. Please pray that God will bless her time here. Pray that our friendship will continue to be encouraging and a blessing. Praise him for providing perfectly, as he always does, a new friend and coworker for me. God is good!
She has jumped right in and worked hard this week! We have been prepping our Christmas sponsorship project (that's what she's doing here - shaving crayons), and she weighed, measured, and de-wormed all the kids this week! She is wonderful. So much fun to be around, sweet, and a great coworker - I have really enjoyed showing her around and talking with her and watching her love the kids. She will be here until just before Christmas. Please pray that God will bless her time here. Pray that our friendship will continue to be encouraging and a blessing. Praise him for providing perfectly, as he always does, a new friend and coworker for me. God is good!
America
I went to America. Shocking, I know... it was hard to explain to my coworkers that I was going to America but not to my house! I managed to get lost 3 times in the Miami airport, stare at skyscrapers like I had never seen anything that tall, sleep on 5 different couches, FREEZE on a Chicago architecture boat tour, step on lots of crunchy fall leaves, go to Concert Choir rehearsals, and spend wonderful time with my family, Aubrey & Jeff, Erica, summer interns, and Wheaton friends and professors. It was definitely refreshing and relaxing, and it was also confirming that I am where I am supposed to be. As I walked around campus, I didn't wish I were still a student, and I didn't feel nearly as nostalgic as I anticipated. Yes, I have wonderful memories from my time at Wheaton, but I don't belong there anymore. The thing that struck me most about America is how easy it seems to live there. I can't describe it, and I know that some Americans live incredibly hard lives, but my life in America seems really easy and comfortable compared to my life in the DR. I am still sorting through that observation and praying that God would reveal ways for me to live in America with the consciousness and faith that I live with here. Another incredible part of my trip was being blessed with teaching manuals/idea books/resources and lots of games, supplies, etc for my new first grade class! See the next blog for more on that... I came back to the DR feeling equipped and excited about teaching and using all my fun new things. I geeked out in the teacher store - it was pretty hilarious - and Molly said it was like I had been shopping for new clothes, showing her everything I got! It was so good to see my family and spend time relaxing together. I also got to spend four days in Milwaukee with Erica, going to school with her and seeing what her city life is like.
America is nice, but I was ready to come home. Maybe not ready to return to the heat, but ready to return to Lauren, my apartment, my students, and this culture that in so many ways feels more normal to me than American culture. What a blessing it is to have "home" in two places! My next trip to the States will be for Christmas, and I will be in Quakertown on that trip.
America is nice, but I was ready to come home. Maybe not ready to return to the heat, but ready to return to Lauren, my apartment, my students, and this culture that in so many ways feels more normal to me than American culture. What a blessing it is to have "home" in two places! My next trip to the States will be for Christmas, and I will be in Quakertown on that trip.
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