Day 23

We are moving into our third week of teaching on Monday, and hopefully it goes a little more smoothly than the second week! This practicum has definitely been testing my classroom management skills, as the kids here are used to their teachers using negative reinforcement and physical punishment as discipline tools. Getting my 33 little ones to respond to positive reinforcement is a little difficult. The teachers here have advised us that we should not smile or laugh with our students very much. I am finding this very hard. On the other hand, my teacher and I get along so great, and both the principals and the teachers have approached all three of us girls and congratulated us on our work so far. They said that they are shocked at how quickly we have adapted here. We do feel very comfortable in the school already, which is nice. At first the teachers were a bit hard to get to know, but we killed them with kindness! The principal has also asked me if two university of Belize students studying to be teachers could come in and observe one of my math classes. They will have to do a report on the methods that I use, and possibly take over a math class of mine in the future to put these methods to practice. I was shocked that I was asked, but was very happy too!

The picture above is one that Katie took of me doing some school planning in our kitchen (pretty nice floors eh). The one below left is the bathroom and the one on the right is the view that I have from my bed. I sleep in the living room on a single bed, and Melissa and Katie sleep in the bedroom in a single and double bed. We were actually shocked by how nice our apartment is. It's definitely the nicest place that we have seen in Punta Gorda. We lucked out! We've been taking in some of the local routines as well. We go to the market at 6:00am on Saturdays to get fruit and vegetables, and we went to a bar with a few friends last night who taught us how to dance to what they call 'punta rock'. Punta Gorda is also a very religious town, so we have been training our little Katie to be a good catholic:) She has already learned the our father and is working on the hail mary. She tries to fake it, but her kids see right through her. That's all for now. Thanks for all of your comments everyone. I like to hear your thoughts. I hope 2007 is being good to you!