Spoken in the Classroom

I have been working full-time as an elementary teacher for 4 full weeks now, and it has been the best experience ever! I'm getting paid to do something that thrills me, even when the days stretch long.

Who are my students? I spend my days teaching over 30 different students, ranging from K-5th grade. A few speak English as their native language, but most are still learning the basics of the language... which is most of the reason why I am there. But no matter where the kids come from, they truly do say the darndest things to me!

I can't keep this stuff to myself. They just make me so happy. So here is the first installment of "Spoken in the Classroom"... or multiple classrooms, which is really more the case for me.

On adult social lives:
Me: (when teaching on weather) "My friends took pictures of hail this weekend; I'll show you a picture tomorrow."
Them: "Wait, but you're a big person. You don't have friends!"

On co-worker relationships:
"Are you my teacher's granddaughter?"

On side effects:
(whispered) "The dentist said I can't talk because I have a cavity. So I can't read to you for, like, a really long time."

On parents and dating:
"Wait, I think I know you. My dad brought a girl like you home with him before."

On my ravishing good looks:
"Is your name Mrs. Dahl because you look like a Barbie doll?" (um, no.)

On those mean ol' teachers:
"Do teachers like Spring Break? Because I think they just want us to go to school all the time."

On sucking up for prizes:
"I just love learning, Mrs. Dahl; if I could learn all day long I probably would!" (yeah right)

Home and Graduating

I could add more pictures in an attempt to describe the end of my trip in Ecuador, but I think I'm finished. It was a beautiful trip, where I learned a lot about myself as a teacher, other school philosophies, myself as a traveler and learner, and that people really are basically the same no matter where you go. I'm thankful for this trip, and now I am so happy to be home.

Graduation is tomorrow, and I'm full of a lot of sentimental feelings toward the school that gave me a degree, a husband, a confidence in myself, and a spark to reach and teach people from all over the world. Although I'm not excited to sit through 2 hours of the same ceremony I've experienced before with friends, I am looking oh-so-forward to all the opportunities that lie just beyond the cap & gown. They're exciting things; maybe I'll share them soon. But for now... I'll just head to Diddle and sit down for a while.

Festival de Quito

Our stay in Ecuador holds a very important holiday for the people of Quito; the Festival de Quito, or their 500-something year anniversary! Can you imagine living in a city that has over 500 years of rich political and cultural history? The festivities traditionally centered around the Spanish-influenced bull fights, but this year the president has ruled the fights to be too cruel for the bulls. We have gotten the impression that Festival de Quito just hasn't been the same since there are no fights to watch.

The end of the fights did not stop Colegio Menor from celebrating, however, so we jumped right into this major cultural holiday right alongside our students! The day before the official holiday, students showed up in traditional dress or the colors of Quito's flag, red and blue. Kind of interesting that a city has its own flag, eh? The entire early childhood school came outside to hear the high school band perform traditional Songs from Quito, which are extremely catchy and very happy! What other city do you know that has its own widely-known song? And the kids were SO CUTE waving their flags and singing every word!

After the performance, our kinder classes ate snacks of traditional Quito dulces, or sweets. I love that the city has such a rich tradition that they can even claim sweets as their own! I tested way too many of those yummy things, and I found a lot of things I wished were easy to find in the States. Yum yum!!

Today, the actual anniversary date, we had a vacation from school. So us Americans ventured into the old town to see what was going on! The whole area was covered in flags, in every plaza and on most buildings. We saw several bands, watched performers dancing, and ate lunch once again in an old palace. We even visited a Pre-Columbian museum! This week has further opened my appreciation for places with rich, deep, and long-standing culture. I love the excitement this week has brought!

Listen to their theme song, El Chulla Quiteno, that we danced to at school with the bad and the kids. I promise it's catchy and the happiest song you'll ever hear, I think:

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iBLtxPSBkoY

Field Trip

During student teaching in the States, I never got the chance to go on any field trips as a teacher. Somehow, with the dates for my placements, I always seemed to miss those that my classes went on! I was so excited to find out that the kinder classes at our school would be going on a field trip during my time here. We went to Itchimbia, a public park located in downtown Quito. The students were SO excited and looked adorable in their class tshirts! It was a simple trip, lasting just a couple hours so that the class could walk around the park looking at plants & animals, but they had such a good time. And I did, too, until a necklace that a student had me hold slipped off my wrist and fell between the cracks of the stairs in the picture below! It was quite an ordeal and took a lot of skill to retrieve it... but in the end I came out successful and everything went back to normal. Thank goodness. Just look at the cuties I spent that morning with!

The Middle of the World

This past weekend was packed with so much that I decided to break it up into several posts. On Saturday, we took a visit to "El Centro del Mundo," or the center of the Earth, or as we call it- The Equator!! Ecuador is one of just a handful of countries that reside on the equator, but because of the mountains it is typically a breezy 60-70 degrees. The park we visited was really interesting, and I clearly had a little fun:

I'm standing on two hemispheres! Whaaaat?!

A stuffed llama!!

We also walked through several museums at the park, including an insectarium (gross, look at the SIZE of those beetles!!!!) and a cultural exhibit of the indigenous groups in Ecuador. Quito is a very modern city, so it was really neat to see the unique groups that exist outside the capital city.

After the Equator, we went shopping and bartering at a market, where of of course I bought a silk llama scarf... And lots of Christmas presents! We joined our host mom for Mass at the CUTEST country church and stopped by a local bakery for some yummo things. It was so fancy that I had to take a picture! I have seen so many beautiful places here that I am afraid I will forget. I got some strange looks for taking pictures at the bakery, but I don't want to forget!

My Ecuadorian School

It's been a great few days in Kinder Pasochoa! Our school, Colegio Menor, is incredible. To give you an example, watch this video about the departments and all it has to offer for PK-12. Today, the kinders had a half day so the teachers could go to a meeting about using iPads in the classroom and implementing them into instruction... which floored me! It is so surprising (although it really shouldn't be) that this school has even more resources available for use than most other schools I've worked with in KY.

My sweet teacher Cynthia always asks me to give her any ideas or resources for teaching that I've learned in America, but I continually tell her how much she has already taught me. This class uses recycled materials for so many hands-on activities, their classroom environment is much more relaxed, and they become very innovative with the things they already have available for use in the classroom. And don't even get me started on the enormous amount of experience I've gained in second language learning for kids! Since we can only speak in English to our students and many of them are not nearly fluent, I have gained SO much experience that I am DYING to use one day in the ESL classroom.

As for the view from our playground area, I couldn't ask for anything better than a mountain view. I'll take these mountains over a beach any day!!

Hola Ecuador!

 

I'm finally in Ecuador, the country of unpredictable weather and beautiful-ness everywhere! It just took me about 50000 hours to figure out how to post pictures from my phone to blogger through an iPad, so no promises about how often you'll see pictures on here. But for now, here's the highlights of our first few days in Quito:

1. Meeting our adorable host momma and her presh family. She is a m.u.f.f.i.n. No habla Ingles, but her facial expressions are enough to communicate AND crack me up! We love her and her gorgeous home.

2. We went to La Basilica in Quito, which reminds me a lot of Notre Dame. But the important part is that we climbed allll the way to the top and got inside the clock! I never knew that heights freaked me out until I was clinging to a spiral staircase looking down at the church beneath me.

3. The first day of school was today! I met my Kinder class and their sweet teacher & assistant. The kiddos are hyper and cute as can be, and we have a beautiful mountain view from right outside our door! Interestingly, this bilingual school only wants kinder teachers to speak to the students in English. Good for this girl, but bad for this girl who needs practice for communicating with her host mom! 

That's all for now. Hasta luego :)

Fruit. The non-edible kind.

Today was my mid-term assessment for student teaching, which means my journey is almost halfway complete. Halfway complete. I couldn't believe myself when I told those crazy first-graders that tomorrow will be my last day in their class. I'm actually kind of sad, and yet I can't wait to see what I will be learning in my next placement!

September held lots of exciting and wonderful things, such as letting the laundry pile up on our couch. Let this be an example of what our humble home-apartment has looked like ever since I began student teaching:

I also received a copy last week of the newly published children's book that I helped to edit last semester (!!!):

To top it all off, yet ANOTHER editing piece that I worked on last semester finally made it through the committees and ranks and will be published as an article in an academic journal! I'm not really that smart, I just really like telling people when they spell something wrong or use a comma too often I guess.

Student teaching has had its fair share of stressful moments. That is definitely for sure. I'm learning to embrace the stress and turn it into opportunities to give myself grace, receive grace from my Father, and willingly accept that I'm not perfect. And y'all, I LOVE WHAT I DO. Although I'm working on learning to love the late nights/early mornings, daily "failures," imperfections, outrageous kids who have serious issues, frustrating moments, and parents who don't care as much as I think they should, I love teaching my students each day and I am thrilled to watch them progress through the journey of a school year. I love it. Maybe I'm being too optimistic and naive, but it is incredible to get to this point in my collegiate journey and feel so in-touch with the gifts and abilities God has given me. If we're all uniquely crafted by our Maker to do certain things with excellence and passion, shouldn't we do it with gusto? In a world of people who are still trying to figure out "what to do" with their lives, I'm thankful for a season where I feel useful and completely at peace. I'm thankful that the Lord has cut out a path for me and shown it plainly. For this season, in this moment, I love doing what I do. I love being a wife to D and a teacher to 27 needy and tiny kids. I love being able to develop myself as a professional through writing, editing, and working with words. Waiting for all of that to happen was worth it. The wait was long and it was so often very hard, but this sweet season has been one worth waiting for.

If my junior-in-college self read this post written by another person, my junior-in-college self probably would have felt really bitter and angry. "Why can't I just be there? I'm so tired of the awful stuff that doesn't even matter. Let's just skip to student teaching. I am so tired of waiting and working and wailing over busy work and craziness. And I want a husband." That's what I'd say. But oh, junior-in-college self.... the wait really is worth it. It builds character and makes you realize how much you actually want it. And it helps you give a whole lot of worry and weariness and impatience over to King Jesus. So freshen up and bite the bullet, buddy. You WILL see fruit for your labor. And PS- student teaching & marriage have issues of their own, so let everything work out in its own time. Enjoy eating the same meal for days without worrying about your husband scarfing it all down.

...Someone remind me that I wrote this post one day when I'm fuming and frustrated about teaching all day on only 3 hours of sleep. Really.

"The Test"

I've never been one to get into politics, and I really am pretty oblivious to everything going on in the world, but seeing news like this really hits home for me. For any of you who may be reading this blog and care about education, this is likely to pick a lot of people's brains. My classmates and I gripe and complain all the time about the practical effects that NCLB have had on classroom instruction & atmosphere... but what happens when that accountability is suddenly slipped out from underneath us and we quickly get what we want? I'm afraid that too little structure could be detrimental for all of us.

As a future teacher, I want my students to enjoy learning in a way that does not stress them out and make them fear "The Test," but I know that many teachers are out there in the classroom because they need a job and they like being in control. I mean really- it's easy to fall into that when you have 20-something little minions staring at you and obeying your every command. And learning becomes a burdensome, secondhand task. So maybe some kind of accountability is needed, but not the kind that stresses out even the teacher with the best intentions. And maybe we should start taking the politics out of the matter so that we can really think about the effects it has on education. But who am I to talk- I really don't know much about politics and how they work? I'm just a little ol college student, with 1 million dreams/plans about how I'd love to run a classroom and love on my students, but those are all really just theories right now. I'm living my future through what I read in a textbook. For now, I'll keep reading up on all this educational politics stuff and hope that it'll benefit me later!

On another note, I was surprised to find out that KY was the first to appeal to the President for a waiver on testing & accountability. Represent.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/09/no-child-left-behind-waivers_n_1264872.html?view=print&comm_ref=false

Day 2: Where I would like to be in 10 years

This one is so much easier to write about than yesterday's topic! Since the day my elementary teacher gave me an agenda to write down my assignments, I've been hooked on planning- in fact, I'm pretty sure I wrote my friends' assignments down in their agendas in 4th grade. It's that bad. I still have the planners I used in high school and my freshman year of college for 2 reasons: 1)I'm that attached to my planners and 2) it makes me laugh to look back at how much I wrote down and how ridiculously organized I was (and still am, really). I was a busy girl, but the organization of it all is what keeps me together.

Not only do I hold tight to my planner in order to know the next few weeks of my life, but I also hold tight to plans for the future with a grip that the Lord is slowly loosening and releasing. I can remember a time in high school when I told a friend that I would be perfectly content to be a "soccer mom" for the rest of my life- minivan and all. I just knew that my life would involve public relations, children, and a husband. And a minivan, of course.

After spending a week in Guatemala and having my heart tugged in a thousand different directions by God through the faces of sweet little kids, I found my "soccer mom" plans to be tremendously shaken and questioned. I began to wonder just what the Lord had in store for me, and realized that I had been holding on to my future plans with a frightening grip that relented any tender whisper from God to give them up. I considered going on a summer-long trip that would take me away from many close loved ones, and I almost talked myself out of it. In fact, many people tried to talk me out of it. But I found a short and profound quote by Corrie ten Boom in the front of my Bible, and I immediately applied to go to Asia:

"Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God."

It seems like a simple concept, but when you're in college and literally feel like the entire world is at your feet, it can be overwhelming to peacefully submit an entire life and future to the Lord. Since going to Asia, I have learned that people have many plans, but the Lord determines every single one of their steps (Prov. 16:9). Since then, I've made so many plans and had so many expectations, and it just seems to me that all of those plans never seem to work out the way I intend for them to. Therefore, when I tell you my plans, I will most definitely put the disclaimer of "Lord willing" in front of it- and it is incredible what peace has washed over me as a result of laying all of my plans in His hands! I wish I could go on for a few more days about the incredible lessons I have learned from the Lord about resting on the promise that He sees and knows everything that will happen to me, and He is in control of every bit of it.

So yes, I have those fun ideas about where I'd like to be in 10 years- I'd love to be married to David Carl and have had a few precious little children by then, and I would love to have a couple years of experience under my belt of teaching ESL and special needs kids, and I would LOVE to be in another country where the name of Jesus is rarely spoken, and I would love to have learned how to cook like my momma and sew precious little dresses for precious little girls, and it would be great if we were all healthy and happy and little world travelers. But I know that God does not promise for everything to turn out the way I plan, so I'm resting on the promise that He allows every good, pleasing, and perfect purpose of His own to come to completion (Romans 12:2).

Of course, I would decide to give the long answer to a seemingly easy question.