staircase to heaven.

dramatic title?
possibly.

but let me tell you about one of the beautiful things that is occurring at our house.

as you may (or may not) know, in the DR, it is acceptable...nay...required (another slight exaggeration) to sit on your roof.
there are many reasons why one would choose to perch atop the roof:
1. stargazing (the most obvious)
2. shadow puppet shows on the neighbor's house at sunset
3. quiet time of reflection and prayer
4. sleeping (yes, I slept one night on the roof)
5. watching people in the poor neighborhood (barrio) on the other side of our house.
6. talking to great friends
7. cooking s'mores (yes. for Christy's birthday we sat on the roof to make s'mores. and stargaze and talk. ique bueno!)

Needless to say, there are many great reasons that one would particularly fancy a good sit upon the techo (roof in spanish...one of my newly acquired vocabulary words).

Now onto the good story:
BEFORE:
We used to have to get up on the roof by a homemade ladder that our wonderful, wonderful landlord, Guido, graciously allowed us to borrow.
(below: the ladder)


AFTER:
Guido decided that his girls (that's what I think he thinks of us as...his daughters) should maybe be a little safer when they are going up on the roof. and maybe potentially he wants to build a second story to our house...ENTONCES (therefore) he built us a staircase. Yep. It took him maybe a week, but not we have a fully-functioning staircase. AND Kelsey, Karyn, and I carved our name/initials into it. que bueno, indeed!
(below: the staircase...not fully complete in this picture, but now it is. I don't have many recent pictures)



MORAL OF THE STORY:
get an awesome landlord who thinks of you as his daughters. get a landlord who is motivated to get projects done.


I'm thankful. :)

TARANTULA!

the TARANTULA!
I know many, many of you have been waiting for this story so here goes: during my first prep of the day I walked into a large commotion in the office. I asked "que paso?" (what happened?) they told me to go to the bathroom and see. HOLY SNAP! A HUGE SPIDER is trapped under the garbage can. Wowzers. Then we decided to take it outside and the Domincian science teacher (Mr. Juan) put it outside and let it crawl out. (side note: one of the other teachers has a severe phobia of spiders. that comes into play later...) So the hurrah was over. UNTIL I decide that I want to keep it in my classroom as a pet. BALLER. what other teacher could say that they had a real, wild tarantula as a class pet?? Not too many! So, thanks to Brooke who randomly had a terrarium, I went outside and our amazing gateguard Fausto helped me trap this poor sucker in the cage. Immediately I took it upstairs (away from phobic teacher who never comes upstairs, so plan is flawless right? wrong!) and showed it to my class, who loved it, showed it to the 9th graders, who loved it, and showed it to anyone else who wanted to come see it. 2 minutes later I get a note "Dear Miss Brewer, blah blah blah i'm scared of spiders...blah blah blah please let it go and take it out of the building blah blah blah I love you. Love, phobic teacher" Okay, so maybe that's not exactly what the letter said, and Rachel, I'm totally joking. Seriously. :) But basically I was asked to take it out of the building and then get rid of it after school. Tears were shed in my classroom. I took it to an unknown location for the rest of the day, and then wonderful Christy Elmer took us on her pasola to the ******* (edited to protect sanity) so our little friend the tarantula could have a better life...


Funny after-story: (Rachel, I hope you think this is funny...)
I hid the tarantula in my cubby at school. Unknown to Miss Cunningham. A few teachers asked to see it at the end of the day, but SHOOT! Rachel was sitting in the teacher's lounge on the computer. So we sneakily, very sneakily, took it out of the cage (no just kidding!) I took away the folder that was in front of it, and showed the teachers, after I explained to them Rachel's phobia. I don't think she had any idea. whoops. I'm such a bad person and a bad friend!!

check out more pictures on my picasa site!!!

the reason...

Teaching Update:

I figured you, as faithful supporters, may want to know how teaching is going since that is the ‘main’ reason why I am here.

Where do I begin? I think I could begin by complaining that we have no functioning printer or copier, I am missing curriculum, and have a class that continually beats each other up and are the meanest kids I have ever encountered.

BUT.

I would love to share with you some of the awesome things that we are learning.

In reading I am attempting to do literature circles with them (ghetto style, as we have no copier, so a lot of it is written by hand or they just don’t answer questions about the chapters). ALSO we only have one copy of each book, therefore the students aren’t getting the best possibly experience, but I’m introducing them to it. ENTONCES a lot of what I do is expose them to literature and books. I’ve been buying (thanks to many gracious donations) books for the kids that they have been EATING up (Seymour Simon, Captain Underpants, Magic Tree House, etc.) so that is encouraging. ALSO I think our library has just gotten set up, so hopefully soon I’m going to schedule a time to go to the library and have my students pick a book to do a book report on (when we are done with our lit circles)

Math is going well. I have students who have many, many gaps in their learning, therefore simple concepts like multiplication facts, are lacking. I get discouraged because I know my students are smart, but many of them lack motivation and the necessary skills to continue to grasp the new concepts as we go through the book. I’ve tried to tutor some of the kids (specifically 2) but they still just cannot grasp concepts. Multiplication and Division are my goals for the year…get those areas of mathematics mastered.

Language and Writing are the big struggle areas. I have no curriculum, therefore am making everything up as I go. I don’t know how to teach Language (please don’t be discouraged Dr. Quinn!). They don’t like to write, although I’m trying to think of creative ways to get them to write…

Basically, I’m struggling through my first year of teaching. Which I feel like is typical for any first year teacher. The lack of resources has made it challenging, but there are always ways around it. I’m trying to become a better teacher through it all, even if that means spending my entire Saturday morning at school…

God is faithful, and I trust that He will bless this year as long as I continue to pursue Him and His plan for these students this year…

joy in the DR.

I know I have not updated my blog in a LONG while, but I am going to attempt to slowly but surely update you on my life ...

so I am going to begin with the things that give me greatest joy at working at JCS.

4 words: First and Second Graders.

I LOVE walking out every morning to the cafeteria area and being mobbed by wonderful, loving small children who want nothing more than a good morning hug or a FUERTE low-five. or to just hang all over me. It's seriously the joy of the morning.

I LOVE my lunch time. I have a special time with the maturing 3rd graders as we sit and talk about school, weekends, the latest Jonas Brothers news, and mostly I just love listening to them as they talk in Spanish and I try and understand what they are saying.



I LOVE after schools. I love being mobbed, once again, by the first and second graders chanting "eh-steekers, eh-steekers, eh-steekers" (stickers) until I give in and then have a massive group of students running up the staircase to my classroom. It's SO great.

Mostly I love the relationships that I'm building with the students. Estheisy who I've mentioned many times before is a big joy in my life. Every morning, noon, and afternoon I get ambushed by this little girl. Oftentimes while I'm sitting with the third graders at lunch, Estheisy comes and sits on my lap and I just hold her for awhile and then she shares my lunch with me. I love my special time with my special girl. :)

another joy:
daily I receive wonderful pictures of hearts and people holding hands and stick figures. I keep them all. I especially love receiving pictures from my friend Nathalia and notes from my dear friend Estheisy. After I write Estheisy a little note, I receive the same words in a note back to me. I think I should maybe start saying how awesome she is...therefore I will receive a note saying how awesome I am. no, just kidding!



Bonus story of love.
Today after I brought my students in from recess, they were writing in their Language/Writing notebooks, I happened to look outside and what I saw just made me smile and laugh a little out loud. I saw the first graders (specifically Miss Elmer's class) outside playing. They were giving each other piggy back rides (which they have learned from me...bad example. I'm sorry, Miss Elmer!) but the funniest part was that they were lopsided or the one on the back was much bigger, therefore they would both just fall over. again and again I watched the first graders just continue to give each other piggy back rides and falling over. again and again. Holy joyful. I cannot even lie to you, it made my day so much better.



Can I just say one thing I love about teaching in the DR? I love that I can go to a student's mom's store and pick her up and take her out for ice cream. One Friday night I just went to a first grader's mom's store and just took her out for ice cream. It made her so happy to spend time with Miss Kelsey and Miss Brewer, and it made me so happy to spend time with my little friend. I love that it is okay to just hang out with the students outside of school. SO different than in the United States. We are allowed, nay, encouraged to develop great relationships with students and are free to facilitate those relationship in any appropriate manner possible. One Sunday we had two girls over (twins: Carla Nicole and Carla Camille) just to spend time with us, play Uno, and go to church. Tell me about how that would fly in the US. not. I love this school because of this. :)

I am so encouraged by this. :)

I will try and update more later, but for now, this is the joy that is coming from my heart! :)