School Has Officially Started

Well my school year has begun. I am working with the same three Nicaraguan English teachers at the same two public high schools. For those of you who may have forgotten (or tal vez never knew), this is short tutorial about what high school is like here:

It's five years long and they call each year a number: 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th. Most 1st years are 11 years old. Some are 16. Last year I worked with all years except 3rd; this year I've decided to do it a little differently. Due to some inappropriateness on the 4th and 5th year boys' part, I'm only working with 1st, 2nd, and 3rd years. It's already MUCH better. They're not yet "brave" enough to ask me on dates so...that's a nice change.

On Mondays and Wednesdays I work at the larger public school and on Tuesdays the smaller one. I like both for different reasons. The big one has more people to get to know and more of a community feel for me. The smaller one is more like a family because it is THAT small.

So how it works is I meet with each of the 3 Nica teachers and we plan what we'll do in class that week. We split up the materials we need to make for the class and usually do those on our own time. Once it's time for class we co-teach. This is difficult for me because I like things done a certain way and it's hard to be flexible sometimes...but I'm learning and trying. Patience is not a virtue I have.

My community classes have also started. The new beginners' class has an unknown number of people in it. We've met twice. For the informational meeting there were 41 people. The first night of real class there were 48. 65 people are on the sign-up sheet. Tonight they're taking a quiz though so that'll be the attendance and I'll know for real how many people I'm teaching. Speaking of, I've got to get out of here and go set up our classroom for the night (in the town's "library").

I miss you guys. A lot.