If at first you don't succeed.. try again

Hi everyone! Day two is over with and I am in good spirits! Yesterday I left the school exhausted and concerned that there was no way I could make it through the next few weeks teaching these kids. The class was out of hand and the students were almost unmanageable. So I did some thinking last night and some serious planning and it definitely paid off! Today I went in with a bag full of tricks hoping that at least one of them would work in my favor and I surprisingly saw success!

I started out the morning working with Dyanara on her Braille again. She continues to do very well and I am so impressed with her potential to learn. I have also worked really hard at including her in every lesson. Normally Dyanara has to sit and do nothing during lessons so I wanted to change that now that the teacher has me as an extra pair of hands. I brought large flash cards of various kinds and large lined paper. I wrote down everything for her in large print with a bold black marker so that she could read it and also brought some manipulatives for her to use during the lessons. She was so excited to be doing something during class!

I also had her do little things like underline words on the board when I was teaching or answer questions. She is so bright and so eager to learn and it is wonderful to see her use these skills. After lunch it was my turn to teach again. I started off the lesson by explaining my expectations for the students. I told them we were playing a game called teacher versus students. In the game students got a point if they did something good and I got a point if they did something bad. Whoever won at the end of the day won a prize. I also gave students tickets if they did something exceptionally good in class. Students wrote their name on the tickets and at the end of the week I am going to raffle off some of the school supplies I brought to students who have tickets. The students got so excited to do both of these games. They responded immediately and the classroom got extremely manageable.

I was shocked to say the least. Something that simple changed the entire classroom dynamic for the rest of the day. The students were much more engaged and were encouraging each other to be quiet and raise their hands. This made my job much easier. I still had a few of my boys who were being a little bit out of hand at times but I saw a 360 degree improvement from day one. We still have some work to do but the prospect of what I saw today is encouraging. After school I came back and laid by the pool and napped in the hammock. Then we went to dinner again at Nery's. At Nery's I got the two most delicious burritos I have ever eaten in my life, both at least a foot long, for only 3$ American. Belize.... I love you.