Our Students

Some of you may have heard me talking or writing about how our students speak and write. Generally, it is seen as poor taste to poke fun at English Language Learners and how they speak English, but our students have been learning it since at least kindergarten. One of our co-workers wrote the email below as his weekly reminder about our Ultimate Frisbee game. It is pretty amazing how accurate it is compared to my student's speech. 


Frisbee is a sport that been played for million years about and you should like it. For example, Ultimate Frisbee was new and was invented in california US until the 1960s.  You need frisbee and many friends on order that to play. There are some arguments why should you play frisbee? Frisbee gives the excercise because you have to run fastly and are always out of breathes when they throw the frisbee far but you didn't got it. Frisbee encourages teamwork because you are in a team and teams are important to play together. Frisbee teaches discipline and skill since these are great things so you are not mediocre. Is that this is why my thesis;  Ultimate Frisbee is the sport you need to be playing in Tuesday on 4pm.

ps mr put me a 90.


My favorite is the last line. I hear that all the time. They say put instead of give when talking about grades. They also always ask about what homework I left them (instead of gave them). The thing is, they usually know how to say it correctly if you tell them that's not how we say it in English. Teaching the kids the proper way to say things in English has become my favorite thing about working here. Usually it's grammar, but I also have given mini-lessons on "molest" (to bother in Spanish) and "pedophile" which they thought just meant liked children. 


Sometimes I really have no idea what they are trying to say and sometimes I just want to push them to think about the correct way to say something. I have become quite fond of saying "that's not an English sentence" and "that doesn't make sense in English." 

Halloween

We aren't big on Halloween and we thought about skipping it this year. But, Natalie's school had the kids dress up and have parties, so we went along with it. We were going to dress her up like Dora (the show she's obsessed with) but the shorts were the same price as complete other costumes. Natalie picked out a pink fairy costume (surprise, surprise).

She loved it! She kept asking "tan I put on my alloween tostume?" For trick or treating we gave all our neighbors a handfull of candy and asked them to give her a few pieces when we came by. Here are a few photos:

Mark and Kelsy let her pick which ones she wanted.



 When Ashely answered the door Natalie said "I want candy." The three of us cracked up.

Jenny put on her vampire teeth for Natalie when we came by.

Someday I hope Natalie will learn that she doesn't really like candy. She was excited and wanted to have it, but each time she tried something new she kept giving it back to me and saying "I non't lite it."

Things are going well here. David is excited because since Thanksgiving isn't a thing here everyone is gearing up for Christmas. There are decorations everywhere. He's planned some Christmas movie nights to have the foreign hires over to hang out. Should be fun.

Other than that it's mostly work and hanging out. I found out pretty much all my students are a couple grade levels behind in math (according to these personalized tests that try to find thier level). A handful scored as low as the middle of second grade! It's made for a challenging year but I'm excited that my classes are small enough to be able to differentiate and try to catch some of the kids up while learning new material.

I had what I think was a great observation by my principal last week (I haven't talked to her yet about it, but I thought it went really well). All of my kids seemed to "get" what I wanted them to and they were well behaved. It helped me remember why I go to school everyday even though some days aren't exactly fun.

We're heading to La Ceiba for Thanksgiving weekend. Luke and Cary (friends from David's Concordia program) are teaching at a school there and invited us for the weekend. David's mom will be here too, which is an added bonus. We are greatly looking forward to both. There is also an early Thanksgiving planned at our complex next weekend. We're going to play football (my idea) and then have dinner. Should be good food and good people.