Monday, January 30, 2012

Faces

Today was a good day. The bus was quiet on the way to El Refugio, where I taught English this morning. Doris had the kids more organized and separated into smaller classes. I started with the youngest and worked my way up to the oldest in half hour sessions.

With the three younger groups, I helped them practice talking about emotions. They learned "happy," "sad," "angry," "bored," "scared," and "surprised." We drew pictures, happy faces, sad faces, and so on for each word, and then we took pictures of all of us making those faces. With one of the older groups I read "The Three Billy Goats Gruff," and we looked for the emotions in the story. That group really enjoyed it as a sort of treasure hunt. But one of my best achievements of the day was when Angelo put down his whiteboard and marker, looked at me with a straight face, and said, "I'm bored." At least he's learning.

The oldest group didn't feel like drawing. They are much more advanced than the younger kids. Instead, they wanted to read. I found a Magic Treehouse book in our cupboard, and we took turns reading to each other. I was amazed at their comprehension. They had lots of questions, but they had a pretty good idea of what was happening in the story. They're excited to finish the book next week.

This afternoon I was supposed to teach English with a group of kids from San Martin, but no one came. I don't know when or where the communication fell through, but it did. Maybe next time kids will show up. But instead of hanging around the apartment, Carlos and I took the time to go to Santa Rosa to spend time with the kids there. We played more soccer and met a few more kids. They're getting pretty excited about our treasure hunt on Saturday. When we left, the kids asked us to come and play again tomorrow. When we said yes, you should have seen their faces.

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