Blogs
2nd and 6th
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This week has been rhythmic (so brace yourself because it won't be nearly as exciting as last week >D). I get up, teach 2nd grade English, eat lunch, work out, teach 6th grade, tutor high schoolers, eat dinner, then go to bed- with a little game playing and goofing off in between times.
The 2nd graders are hilarious. They love giving high fives and saying hello. The school I am working at is run with the supervision of Kit, and all the kids from A Greater Hope Orphanage (AGHO), ages K-6, go to school there (the orphanage goes up to 18 years old. 7th-12th grade is taught at a Buddhist public school a few miles away. Kit is currently working on adding High School to the school, but it takes a lot to find and hire the teachers). That being said, the AGHO kids make up less than a quarter of the student populus. In 2nd grade, I only have one AGHO kid. Dealing with a class of 30 2nd graders is probably hard, but when only a few of them speak English functionally it gets interesting. We have begun to learn some key phrases like draw, write, and spell, but for the most part it's charades- a lot of fun >D There is a Khmer English teacher, Sdeoung, who helped me for a few days when I started, but she has moved to 1st grade because they don't have an English teacher anymore (I think she was one of the Hawaii girls who were out here for a few months, but left with my group last week). Anyway, the class mostly consists of spelling, drawing pictures, and playing charades- a great way to start a morning!
The 6th grade class is much more advanced. There are not as many kids either- only 15, not 25-30. Of the 15, five are from the orphanage, and among the other 10 about half can read and speak to a degree- the other five are working on the alphabet still. The class is very shy, and not used to having an English only speaker. So, the first fifteen minutes for me are like staring down a herd of deer, but slowly they realize I am speaking words they know, and everything works out (thus far).
Tutoring High School has been a learning experience as well. I've been slowly closing my bracket around them to see where their skill levels are. First I tried teaching semi colons, dashes, colons, and parenthesis and got the deer look, then I got the 'pshh' look when I tried teaching simple past. Yesterday I had them write a short essay on Micah 6:8 (100 words), and I gleaned a lot of information about where the group is compositionally.
Overall a good week trying to build and maintain diligence and discipline- things I sorely lack.
