A surprising realization: I finally made an exact count of my students. There are 433 of them at 4 different schools. Plus all the teachers. Which explains why I'm having trouble with names.
Most fun: Using The Clash's "Should I Stay or Should I Go?" to practice listening and review the use of should for decision making. Introducing a bunch of 10th graders who mostly are from way out in the campo to early punk rock was a good time. Sadly, we ran out of time before we could extend a discussion of the song to talking about healthy and unhealthy romantic relationships, a previous topic. Seriously though, I bet there are plenty of other punk songs that are really good for teaching English to teens...good beat, catchy, loud, simple lyrics, rhyming...I'm going to investigate this further.
Doing math: We've been giving out math problems to several classes of students as a way to help them practice numbers. The kids seem to like it, surprisingly, and since Nicaraguan students statistically have about as much trouble with math as they do with English, extra practice seems like it kills two birds with one stone!
A global activity to practice the present progressive: This week, I adapted an activity that a Moroccan co-teacher taught me last year at the Welcome Project (the place where I was most recently a volunteer English teacher in the States). Our eighth grade class just finished a lesson on countries and nationalities, so I made a bunch of flashcards with people from different places around the world. Because the time of day is different in different parts of the world, the activities that people are doing in the same moment are very different, which is cool to think about. The students had to write a mini paragraph about each person, describing their country, nationality, and what the person was doing at their time of day.
This activity is better in a ESOL setting, especially a very diverse one, because you can have people think of the time of day in their country and imagine what family or friends back home might be doing at a given time of day. If you have students from Nepal, Turkey and Haiti, the activities are going to be quite different.
So excited for next week: One of my bosses is coming for a visit next week. I'm hoping he has time to observe at least part of my class because the 8th graders in Las Palomas (hands down my favorite class to teach) are going to "interview" him. For homework, I told them they needed to write a few questions that you would ask a visitor from a foreign country. Based on their knowledge of English, I'm expecting some great, slightly invasive questions..."How tall are you? How old are you? Are you married? What color eyes do you have?" It's gonna be a good time.
Worst although most comical arrival home from school this week: Today, I arrived home exhausted, dirty (dry season= billowing dust at all times) and smelly (dry season=profuse sweating at all times, even when not moving) from a bad night of sleep, followed by a 12 hour day of school/ planning session at one of my profe's houses to discover that my host family was out the house. While I dug in my bag for the keys, the neighborhood chavalos approached. "Emily, Emily can we play?? Let's play". I explained to them that I needed to change and eat some things first and that I needed a few minutes to myself. Not wanting to take no for an answer, they tried to follow me into the house and I had to lock them out. While I was showering outdoors, they saw my feet and started yelling for me again, asking what I was doing. I yelled back that I was trying to take a shower, before realizing that I was advertising my nakedness to everyone in the neighborhood. Classy. Then, I needed to return a phone call from my dad. Right as I dialed his number, the chavalos got into the house. "Emily, Can we play?" Chavalos are like zombies: they will always find a way into your house and find a way to get what they want. Except they are cute and earnest.
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