Blessed are the flexible for they shall not be bent out of shape

"We don't teach lessons. We teach children." -- Mrs. Rivera

Well today I learned to be ready to make up things on the fly. The class schedule was all over the place today. I was going to teach a language arts lesson, but due to some circumstances, it got pushed to tomorrow. My teacher was swamped with things she has to accomplish so I did a lot of little things all throughout the day. She called me over and handed me the math textbook and said "I know you don't like math, but can you make up a lesson on this right now?" So... I did. It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be either. I think once you get to know the kids, know how they act, and know where they are based on the past few days, it gets easy to work on the fly. I kind of experienced that after a few English lessons at CLF last summer. But flexibility is a big thing. Sometimes you can't just stick to your lesson. If we're teaching CHILDREN, they come first... before our beautifully planned out lesson plans! My first math lesson on volume I had to only complete half and the next day I made up stuff as I went based on how they performed the previous day. I liked my lesson, but I found out they needed a lot more concentrated help and it took more time than I had planned. Sometimes Dr. Mac (the younger) would teach us in Math in the Middle and discover that we're not at the level she needed us to be for her lesson and would completely divert from her beautiful lesson plan and TEACH US. It was good modeling and I've experienced that as a "teacher" now.

I have started to get along really well with a group of Hispanic boys in my class. One of them came to the States on January 30th of this year. He's from the Dominican Republic and his English is very, very poor. He is oftened helped by a bright-eyed, mischievous, smiley little Mexican boy named Jaime. Two other boys, Bryan and Jaisson, are also full of mischief and fun. I try to get them to teach me more Spanish, but they are somehow still convinced that I really do speak Spanish and I'm just pretending I don't. I think the boy from the DR knows I don't speak Spanish, though. He was leaving today and I said "Adios!" He looked at me and said "Como se dice 'adios' en Filipino?" Haha. I said "Paalam" and he stumbled over the word, but kept trying it.

The science teacher at school is not the most pleasant person on the planet. Actually, he scares me. If I were in his class as a student, I would be crying. He is very saracastic and very mean. At one point he yelled sarcastically at the boy from the DR (I can't remember his name....), "How do you say 'detention' in Spanish?!" The boy just said "Detencion!" The teacher got mad. He had lots of other mean and sarcastic comments that he hurled at the kids for 30 minutes. It was torture. Poor kids. It's no wonder they hate science.