La Casa
This week was a difficult one for me, as I got very sick at the end of the week. This is the second time in the program I've come down with what appears to be a bad cold; I hope that I get better before next week. However, I am going to focus this post on my experiences at La Casa, because they were much more positive this week than during my initial interactions within the dynamics of that classroom.
This week at La Casa was more fun. I did one of the Finance Lessons with the students of Ms. Jennifer's and Ms. Cristina's class, and I think it went over very well. Many of the students were familiar with the materials, but I think the approach I took was my own and therefore different from what they saw before. Everyone was engaged and participating (which was great because I was struggling at first to find the curriculum interesting myself) and by the end of the lesson, I could tell they would be happy to have another one soon. I am worried that with all the trips, activities, and lessons planned for the students here that we might not finish all our finance lessons, but I'll continue working on finding a way to make it work. One thing that helped is that I figured out how amalgamate some of the lessons and convey multiple teaching objectives from different lessons into a single comprehensive lesson. The objectives in the packet are simple and concise, so combining them is still possible- an important take-away for me from this experience for when I will have to adjust lessons on the fly as a teacher.
Hurricane Harbor was a lot of fun. Unfortunately I did not bring my camera for fear that it would get wet, but I wish I had because the students had a lot of fun. One thing that was stressful was that the adult chaperones would frequently turn the students loose in a particular area and they would go off in three or four directions in groups ranging from one to six or seven students. I can't imagine how the chaperones could keep track of all their whereabouts at any given moment, because I honestly could not. One student kept wandering away with this family and I kept thinking to myself "Um why is this random family stealing away our student?" But it turned out that it was the student's aunt, uncle, and cousins, who were also visiting on the same day. So that was another scare that was just a false alarm.
Getting sick at the end of this week was a bummer, but I did have an enjoyable week up until Thursday. I look forward to getting better over the weekend and starting a fresh new week with brand new experiences!
