"we need you to teach infant two"

louisiana government school

the school

too cute. my shy little one.

infant 2

picking up trash : )

the race

racing to the finish...

today when i showed up for school, early-- which is very un-belizian of me, i met with ms. lucy and got ready for the day! the kids came in. we said the lord's prayer. we said the belizian national prayer. we sang the belizian national anthem. and by we, i mean they. they said the belizian national prayer and sang the belizian national anthem. i will learn it.

about 10 minutes into class the vice principal came into the room and said, we're going to need you to teach infant two. hold the phone. me? teach? my own classroom? oh my! so they walked me down to the infant section of the school and brought me to "my" class where there were many confused parents waiting with hyper 5 and 6 year olds. there was no game plan. there was no agenda. chaos. but when is the first day of school NOT pure chaos? so i went in and introduced myself as miss rachel and i would be standing in for their teacher for the day. it turns out that the teacher who i was standing in for was out because her father had died. slowly but surely the parents left, a little unsure that leaving their children with me was a wise decision. reassuring. but i started teaching and both they and i seemed a little more sure.

infant two. well for the first activity we counted. : )

a little math never hurt anyone so i had the kids sit in a circle and put their hands one on top of another in a down-by-the-banks manner. we clapped each hand to the next and as a class counted to 50. some of the kids doubted that we could do it, but we did! si se puede!

next, we got out our math subject notebooks and in perfect penmanship we wrote the numbers 1-50. which again, we were not sure that we could... but they once again succeed!

so at this point i realized that none of the other classes were doing organized lessons so i had them sit in a circle and we introduced ourselves by saying our name, our age, and what we want to be when we grow up. about half the kids in the class said they wanted to be doctors. lots of future policemen, lots of teachers... and one precious little girl said she wanted to grow up to be pretty like me. my heart melted. i, of course, said that when i grew up i wanted to be a singer on broadway or a photographer, and that i was 22. they all immediately told me, but miss you are grown up and you're already a teacher so you can't do that. i told them they should never stop dreaming. something i often forget myself as do most, and i shudder as i say this... adults. i may never be free of my peter pan syndrome.

after that we all went to lunch. in belize the way that schools do lunch is that there is a break from 11:30-1:00 and everyone walks home and eats with their family. i was really hesitant to let my 5 year olds who said that they were walking home alone go off by themselves but after seeing the other teachers relinquish their lee (lee meaning little in creole) children into the world i followed in suit.

when i got back from lunch with my family i was quite early and opened my classroom so that i could go in an assess what was going on. after lunch we were supposed to do language arts, social studies, and then physical education. do-able. nothing i couldn't handle. when the kids started coming back about 7 of them had drawn me pictures when they went home. some little boy brought me in a peacock feather too... which was beautiful and is now laying in my journal.

the afternoon went, well, smoothly would not be a good word for it, but it went. i read some stories to them out loud and we attempted writing sentences in our language notebook. epic fail. this little boy abel brought me his notebook to check. the assignment: write about 3 things you like to do. this little, adorable boy's notebook said, "i like to sin". i asked him to read me his sentence and he replied with "i like to sing". he had left a crucial consonant out of his sentence. no worries, we fixed it.

towards the end of the day the kids were just about nuts so i said let's go pick up trash!! they said, no way! but i said that this is our world and we need to take care of it. and more specifically, this was our school and we need to make it beautiful so we could be proud of it. they said that was very nice of me to care and agreed that we should do it. win! we went outside and picked up all the trash we could and then i let them have some races on the field.

mission accomplished. day 1 done. well, for infant two at least. infant one and two get out at 2:30 and the rest of the grades get out 3:30. so i went back to my standard five class and spent the afternoon in there doing miscellaneous tasks for miss lucy.

at around 4:45 i walked home and met up with my family. i helped ethan and osmani with their homework and now i'm excited to be blogging and hope you enjoy the pictures.

xox