Summertime

Just two of us will be working during the summer--Svetlana and myself. I plan to spend a fair amount of time teaching her basic Spanish, since she mostly reads and writes in Russian. We will be working on curriculum development, materials preparation, and teaching a Sign Language class as well.

We are planning two reunion activities for the students in the summer. One will probably be a visit to the National Aquarium. It is kind of rundown these days, but is still a very manageable field trip that the children will enjoy. The other day is supposed to be an activity by Vision Trust, but I don't have the details yet.

The teachers are almost desperate for larger classrooms. It has been difficult teaching in such cramped quarters this year. I find the children fight more as well, when they are overcrowded. There is no immediate relief in sight, but it is one of our greatest prayer requests.

I was reading an article about education and poverty, and it really described our students to a T. It said that they tend to bring the rules from their barrio into the classroom, and that they need to learn the middle-class rules for success in school. I've never heard it put that clearly, but it makes perfect sense, and I'm going to work on that. It's tricky, because their limited language skills tend toward the concrete still.

Another article I read talked about developing thinking skills, and how many children of poverty come to school without the basics in that area.

I'm constantly studying and researching on the internet, to see how we can improve our methods in educating these special children.