This past week has been great and full of adventure!
I am, however, completely surrounded by lots of disease and sickness. An outbreak of head lice is finally on the decline at ASFG. However, the dengue is starting to go rampant in the city, and the flu is a problem too. Teachers at the school have had to create a contingency plan in the case that schools have to close... which is highly likely. The Mexican Government has said that they will under no circumstances close schools, but apparently whenever they say they will not do something, that really means they are going to do it. It's only a matter of time, and most believe that it will happen in the next few weeks.
I am starting to do a little more teaching now and I am really enjoying my school and my students. This past week I continued to Guided Reading Lessons almost everyday, as well as teaching a math lesson on ordinal numbers. One thing I really like about the American School is how low stress it is compared to schools in the States. The teachers and students are held to high standards, but the school day itself is not quite so daunting. Students at ASFG, a unviersity prep and bilingual school, actually receive 14 years of education before graduating, as well as the option of preschool beforehand. Students must complete Pre 1st Grade before they go to 1st. The math curriculum is followed per normal, but the reading and language curriculum for 1st grade students in the states is split between Pre-1st and 1st, allowing more time for English Language Acquisition to take place effectively. So, although I am teaching 1st graders, they are the age of my 2nd graders at Fox Road! My daily schedule includes about 2.5 hours of teaching time in the morning. The students have a Special and two recesses. At 12:30, the Spanish teacher comes and teaches for the rest of the day, allowing the classroom teacher some extra time to plan and get things done. The students are all very intelligent and I love seeing the work that they do. One of the things I love the most about being here is coming to school each day and hearing the beautiful sound of English and Spanish being spoken in the same room. It is music to my ears!
Last week, we began a unit on insects, and one day was focused on ladybugs. This was lots of fun and reminded me of my time at Fox Road ES, since my cooperating teacher's favorite animal was a ladybug and has her room decorated with them! Here are a few pictures of my beautiful children and their ladybug creations.
Look at this clever continuation of "The Grouchy Ladybug" by Eric Carle that one of my students wrote!
I usually really enjoy travelling alone. However, this past weekend, I tried to travel around a little, and quickly discovered that it was going to be much more difficult than I had anticipated. On Sunday, I first rode the bus dowtown, walked and walked trying to find the right bus station. Once I finally found it, I took a bus to San Juan Chapala, Ajijic, and Chapala- three very small towns about an hour from Guadalajara. These town are all on the edge of Lake Chapala. The lake was beautiful! They also had some absolutely gourgeous colonial churches in the zocalos/ city centers. The towns were really pretty, also. However, the normally adventurous Maria was a little too scared to go exploring and get too far off the beaten path as a lone female traveler.
Lake Chapala from the town of San Juan Cosala
The beautiful church in the zocalo of Ajijic
A view of the street in Chapala
Lucky for me, I have met two really nice people in the past few days. One girl, Sofia, lives with me. She is a Mexican student studying at the university. Hopefully she will be able to show me around some. Also, yesterday I met another girl, Clancy, who just arrived in Guadalajara from Canada on Sunday night. She will be working at ASFG doing something similar to myself for the next month. We exchanged contact info and hop to be travel buddies while we are both here. I was super excited to meet Clancy! Hopefully we will have had some great adventures togther before the next time I write!
Hasta la semana proxima!! Til next week!!
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