Middle Ground

(A handful of 3rd graders and Diana Maria, the assistant to their class.)

I've lost that pleasant blogging rhythm I had the last month of winter term. My apologies.

Here's where we are: solidly into the third of the school year's four parcials; this one ends as Spring Break commences, on March 26th. By quirks of scheduling we will be able to cram much more undiluted teaching into this parcial. The last one was sort of ridiculous in that exams for the first parcial didn't conclude till the first week of November. That left, what? About 5 weeks before we ended up leaving the country ...and the 2 weeks Christmas were a crock anyway. I stopped doing new material in English Zone because about 10 kids were absent every class for Christmas show practice.

Parcial 3, by contrast, has 8 full teaching weeks before we even begin reviewing. And not a day off for months. MONTHS. I guess this is to combat the vacation day-filled first parcial, the absurdly short second parcial, and the end-of-year upheaval that will make up the fourth parcial.

On a non-administrative note, our outlooks dip and soar here in Casa Gringa, as we've dubbed our three-bedroom house in Barrio San Miguel. Probably our most constant battle is that of staying present with our school duties. All three of us are looking forward to spending time with family over Spring Break, so obviously that is a draw on our thoughts (I am flying to the States for my best friend's wedding, Bruin's family is flying into Honduras, and Bowen remains undecided, perhaps joining me in flying to the mother country for a week). However, vacation excitement aside, I am enjoying the mess out of my classes right now. To balance the names I write on the board for bad behavior, I have of late begun displaying the names each day of students who use excellent examples of English. 2nd grade in particular has taken this development in stride; students come up to me every day now sporting such colorful gems as: "My pencil broke." "The uniform is green, blue, and white." and "I would like a carrot and two oranges." 3rd grade's most notable phrase is: "Can I sharpen my pencil?"

Lamentably, I discovered in tutoring today that one of my 3rd graders (who lives with Americans!) can't distinguish the 5 short vowel sounds to save his life. Sigh. Spelling is a rather bloody subject for him.

Encouragingly, I've had a breakthrough about spelling in general. Whilst home over break I consulted with one of my teachers-in-the-wings and she wondered aloud why spelling was weighted so heavily (33%) in my grade configurations and reminded me (not being a teacher by education, I need lots of reminding) that spelling is but a bridge to reading. On that note, I began consciously including including independent English reading into the school week. I'm not sure how much they're comprehending on average, but they love it. They love paging through all the donated books and making lists of words they know. Many more will be gained from context. (Thanks for the tip. You know who you are.) 

Enough for now. My American swain is bidding me draw near on Skype.