Behavior

my classes have been behaving themselves and i think i have done a really good job of making them want to learn and they know i care, so they respect me for the most part. although one of my special ed kids did try to burn down my classroom, I think one of the other kids coerced him into it and consequently I had to douse a flaming window with my water bottle.

Another day I was doing a lesson about sentence patterns and direct objects, so I had groups make up actions that they performed in front of the class and then had the class make sentences out of the action. One kid goes up to do his action and his action is this: he walks up to his desk, sits down, and rips the desk part off the chair part. At least they understand direct objects better now though, because the class screamed out, “Maston broke the chair!” which was the correct answer for subject+verb+direct object hhahhaah.

teaching is definitely getting a little easier as i fall into the routine of things more. what wears me out the most here is not so much the general frustrations of teaching in a culture where education is not a top priority (so school gets canceled a lot, paper runs out and is not replaced, etc), but more the other americans, because the way they deal with things directly reflects on me since laura is such a small town and people here tend to group us together. if one person does something, everyone knows. so like, when allison gets into a fight with teachers at her school, or sarah is being difficult at a staff mtg., everyone hears about it and then they think that all volunteer teachers will be that way too. i think it makes people sort of afraid of approaching me so it's been hard to weasel my way into the community, sometimes i feel more like i'm living in a bubble with sarah and eric than experiencing the marshall islands.