4th of July - Uni-Style

the 4th of july is my favorite holiday. 

i like the parades and picnics and fireworks and general overall feeling of the day. and i'm from philly, the birthplace of liberty. who doesn't love the philadelphia celebrations?

one of my best memories was waiting on the jam-packed independence mall to catch a glimpse of nelson mandela when he received the philadelphia freedom award. we strained our ears and our eyes. i'm sure i didn't really know who he was, but the fact that all of those people were there and that we were too was amazing. now, i cherish that memory of a brief glimpse and forgotten words more than any other "political" memory i've got.

it's been awhile since i was state-side for independence day, and so i always try to celebrate here. we've done barbecues and beach trips, but it's not really the same. 

last summer, i wanted to prepare something with my students - but it was my first semester and i was more than overwhelmed.

forget about it. this semester my students went all out.

 they researched different foods that we eat in the summer - the origen, famous restaurants (Nathans Hotdogs) and even made hamburgers, hotdogs, potato salad and iced-tea for everyone to share

 they learned about some of the founding fathers, some of the history of independence and the different freedoms that americans enjoy today.

 we invited another, lower level class to join our celebrations. their teacher, nubia, was not to be left out. 

 the students even dressed in red, white and blue - down to the details - american flag earrings

 and of course, we had lady liberty present (with american flag toms on her feet)

this was my favorite. projected on the screen a giant picture of woody guthrie and his "fascist killing" guitar. i was most impressed that they bothered to learn the history of "this land is your land"  and actually understand a little more the power of music... and the power of freedom of speech.

it wasn't fireworks and church picnics, but it was nice. it was educational and fit right in.
these are the days i love being a teacher.

preparation

it's hard for me to have a strong-willed child. amely is nothing if not stubborn. if you ask her to do something that she's not interested in, she'll tell you. no. maybe no chaaaank you. but, no. amely hits her brother and then cries when he looks at her. she draws on the wall, and then gets a rag to clean it off. she knows what she's doing is against the rules, but she does it anyway. she scrambles from bed to bed at night, looking for the cool air when it's hot and the warm bodies when it's chilly. and she pretends to sleep - even standing up - when you catch her at her game.

she is my child.
i admit it.

but she is also loving and kind and loves kisses and hugs and sings songs and dances. oh, this child twirls. she has some "princess" skirts and she would live in them if we let her. she has tap shoes (three sizes too big) and she click-clicks through the house. and thank god that this side outweighs the bullheaded side. 

after a long day of butting heads, she'll say "hug me mommy" and it makes the rest of the day go away.

samil is not like amely. he is calm and collected and helpful. you could ask samil to wipe the cow's heiny and he'd do it. because he's just that kid.

but this post is not really about my kids. it's about that kid in school this morning and how thankful i am for preparation.

i'm the principal. it's been announced and the kids know that i'm the boss. most of them take that pretty seriously. not all of them. and at enrollment last week i met a treasure of a child - the youngest of five, the only girl in the family. she's been with us all year, but since i was not really present enough to know the students, we'd never crossed paths. 

today, for some odd reason, they decided i should be the disciplinarian. this child would not do what any body told her to. she wanted to brush a little girl's hair - little girl was not having it. then she killed a lizard and showed it to all her little friends. 

all of the things that amely would do.

i enter with my big-bad-principal persona and put her in "time-out" - she's 4, how bad can this be? she sat for three seconds, then came back in the class. i stood her up, she sat down. i sat her down, she stood up. 

when i finally got her standing and in a safe place she screamed. for five minutes. blood-curdling howls. and while everyone else ran and hid, i sat calmly doing some paperwork.

after all, i had already been prepared. 

we don't always get what we want, but usually we get what we need.

gettin' nerdy.

samil goes to school. and while i don't think that there is anything decidedly wrong about his school - and most preschools in this country - i don't think there's anything right either. i mean, he's learned 5 letter (the vowels) and can count to ten in spanish. sometimes he can tell me about things he learned in school - usually having to do with patriotism or singing songs - but mostly, he's learned what he's learned here, at home.

i would say something like "it's not that the educational system in the US is better persay..." but that would be a lie. because the dominican republic ranks last for education in the caribbean and south america (and by default, north america as well). so, while i'm hyper-aware of the budget cutting and program slashing that is going on in the states, believe me, it is nothing compared to the lack of budget that is even given to education here.

all that said. we, as a family, believe that education is what you make of it - amalio went to a rural school that until recently had two classrooms for grades 1-5, no running water for the bathroom and books so outdated, his grandparents might have used them (had they gone to school), and now is finishing his master's thesis.


we read and create and play.

this semester has been rough for me. i know i've written about being frustrated and stressed at work - and despite the best of intentions, it transferred into our home education. i have been tired and cranky and just wanting to veg out in front of the tv when i got home from work. and amalio's working on that thesis. disastrous for any kind of planning.

so, now that the semester is winding it's way down and i'm way less stressed, we've been on science overload here. we've been doing experiments every day, art projects and all the good stuff. this past week, we mixed colors.

milk , soap and food coloring mixing (milk repels dish soap - add some food coloring and you can see the reaction, it makes the colors "dance". mixing colored water and filling out a chart and, the kids' favorite, vinegar and baking soda surprise mixing - i put the food coloring on the spoons under the baking soda, so they didn't know what colors would happen until they mixed it all up - and watched it "explode".

psychology?

before i got my current job, i did private tutoring. by some weird twist of nature, i ended up being the gringa in the dominican republic tutoring koreans.

there´s actually a fairly large community of koreans living here for all kinds of reasons - missionaries, factory managers, independent business owners. there´s not nearly as many koreans as chinese, but still. it´s a lot.

somehow, i got hooked into the community when i started working independently and they´ve taken care of me and mine ever since. so, when i started at the university, there were certain families, and certain classes i wasn´t ready to give up.

i´ve been working with two lovely characters for a few months now on my breaks at school.

another lovely, fresh from korea, joined our ¨class¨the other day. like many koreans, she has exquisite reading and writing skills but when it comes to expressing ideas orally, she struggles. that´s normal. she´s learning.

so, on our second day of class, i asked her about her family. with a little bit of help from her classmate, she tells me she has an older brother who studies at the university. excellent.

what does he study?

they look at each other. converse some. look in a dictionary. and then.

Kim Yu K looks at me. Dead serious.

¨Mind control.¨

sure don´t wanna meet that brother!

where i've been.

i've been mia for awhile. sorry about that.

things have been moving and shaking and changing and then going right back to where they were. two steps forward, one back.

it's a time of transition down here. samil will start pre-school in the fall, which for normal people would be nothing... but here it means changing tons of things. my job, the biggest. see, i work in the afternoons - from 3 til around 7. i get home, usually, close to 8pm. but samil is going to study in the morning.

who had kids so they'd never see them? not me.

so. new job. i looked at private schools in mono- and bi- lingual settings. i looked at language institutes. i even looked into starting a service that offers english classes to bigger companies. i got my heart set on one school - a great school with great pay. i interviewed. i demo-taught. i interviewed again. and again. and i got frustrated.

know how God puts things to us right when we need it?
after the one millionth interview, i was sure i had the job. then i had the millionth and one, got frustrated and took my resume elsewhere. c'mon, who makes job candidates run around like that? really it was only 4 separate meetings, but it seemed there was always something more. come bring us this, come talk to me about that. and a new something-else everytime i went! (in fact, i taught their SAT math class for a few weeks and after the class was over they asked me to take a competency test, just so they could have it on file! the class was finished, i had been paid. really? a test that you give to people applying for jobs? ridiculous).

i had been set on this school. but. i can't handle the run around.
so, when I got a call from the best (paying) university in santiago, i ironed my only set of business cas. clothes and headed out. i was offered the job on the spot (what a relief after the craziness of that school!) and i start may 11.

i think there are some things to iron out still, like my hours (for the summer, i'll still be teaching in the PM, but once school starts in August, i'll be able to name my own), but i'm super excited.

we begin the transition from a stay-at-home family to a pre-school bound one! amely will still stay with the nanny and, now, we'll be able to maximize our time, and actually have more to spend together!

new and improved.

i'm kind of a sucker about raising my rates.

i do private tutoring, and to be honest, my students can afford to pay way more than i charge. when they show up in chauffered bmws for class, you might just assume they have more than most dominicans.

and even though i found out the rates of private tutors in santo domingo (some charge $40 US dollars an hour!) and compared it to here, i still had a really hard time asking for that raise. don't get me wrong, i'm not getting ripped off. i get paid well, but.

remember the teacher strike i wrote about here? the reasons causing the strike are affecting more than just public school teachers. my transportation costs jumped $40 pesos a day last month which sounds minimal in dollars (about $1.15), but when you consider that we pay about 1/4 of the US price of rent for a big, three-bedroom apartment in a nice area and our electric bill in never more than twenty bucks... a dollar a day is a stretch on the wallet. and speaking of electric, it's doubled in the past 6 months - and not because we use more. the rates (like everywhere, i think) doubled. and gasoline? forget about that, almost $6 US dollars a gallon.

so when the price of gas went up again, and another transportation hike is looking likely, i raised my rates - and reduced my hours! i eliminated a whole student (who cost me the most in transportation... and in headaches) and now i get home earlier!

it's so nice to get home before 8o'clock at night. and to still get the money i deserve. and not have the headaches some tutoring causes. (and to clarify, i really loved my student... it was her mama that drove me crazy). so, my new and improved schedule. unfortunately, it still doesn't leave much to the internet, since we still are dis-connected here at home (and i'm kind of liking that).

check back to see what i'm doing with all my new free time.

unfair snobbery.

if you know me well, you know i'm mean when it comes to writing.

while it seems like i read anything - thats really just circumstantial. i've taken to reading a lot more in spanish lately because of the lack of substance in english. i mean, i recently read two "beach" books back-to-back. not that they were bad. it's just not my style.

i'm a little obsessed with paulo coehlo - a brazilian writer. and not so far from being obsessed with gabriel garcia marquez. neither are really new obsessions so much as a rekindled love affair.

that being said. we're trying to limit the tv time around here, because we don't want samil to grow up addicted to law and order like his mommy or spanish soap operas like his papi. so there's a lot more reading going on all around.

and as i've been looking for information on early childhood education, i've become a sucker for blogs about homeschooling (for the ideas, not the actual homeschooling... homeschooling moms tend to be more creative than anything i've found from actual "teachers").

and... well, i'm kind of a snob about what i read. somewhere deep inside of me i don't think that anyone who spells simple things wrong - constantly - should be teaching anyone. i mean... there's a rule for words like "Flies" and "cries"... and it's a simple rule. or, my favorite - plurals. how hard is it to spell witches instead of witchs. seriously?

i know it's not fair. and i try to keep reading, i really do. but not so deep down, i'm a snob.

see it to believe it.

i just finished planting 40 little leafy plants in cups for my students' mother's day project.


i think they might all die tomorrow.

in the same vein...

and while i'm on it about kids clothes...

i know that 5 year olds like to choose their own clothes. it's an independence thing. but when you see that your little girl's boobies are showing, make her change her shirt.

this little girl came today with a tanktop that had the straps so stretched out that it kept falling down in the front. she got embarassed everytime i fixed her, but really? in a class full of boys what was i supposed to do?

bratz.

i HATE the bratz dolls.

ridiculous.

i had a 5 year old come to class yesterday in some platform shoes, flared pants and half of a halter top. that's right half of it. it was obviously cut to be short. -er, shorter than it should be.

and if that's not enough, she had on blue eyeshadow and lip gloss.
i was surprised.

until i met her mom, who was wearing almost the same outfit when she came to pick her daughter up.

new blog.

so, the teaching blog is up.

we're still working on the webpage.

check it out:

http://teachingkidsenglish.blogspot.com

planning.

i just spent the last... oh, six hours planning for the month of may.

i'm teaching a pre-school age class and the program is completely up to me. we dawdled through april when i realized that they were pretty far behind in the basics - you know, colors, numbers, body parts.

so, we reviewed clothes, body parts, numbers, days, colors and shapes. oh, and school supplies. because i was sick of the kids saying, "teacher can i saca la punta of my pencil" or "teacher, do you have a saca". as far as i'm concerned if they can make complex sentences they should know the word for sharpener.

anyways. this month, we're doing seasons, months, weather (and clothes for the weather), plants and reading. they've never read before in english - with the exception of little words - so there's the trick.

it's a relief to have everything done. i just have to go to school tomorrow and print out the cutouts and make some flashcards. it was six hours today -- but no last minute planning for the month.

that's a first for me.

to every thing a season

i've written some about what.i.do. here in santiago. basically, i teach english. i love my job, i really do. but everyday i can't help but think there is no advancement for english teachers here. maybe that sounds drastic - like being a teacher is not fulfilling... it is. but there really are very few ways to move up.

i teach in a little institute that annexed off of a pretty popular private school. the school is great. the teachers are well paid (and therefore happy), well educated and overall enthusiastic about teaching. the school is organized with vice principals, coordinators, gym teachers, art teachers and computer teachers - a rare find in a middle-class school. the owners are fantastic. i.love.them. a big - ok, HUGE - part of the reason that i'm still there is becasue the owners are that great. i'm allowed to do whatever i want in my class, organize activities and anything. they throw extra money my way occasionally - especially when i'm not expecting it.

the problem? the institute is not organized. the coordination is pretty inexperienced and in order to keep things running, i usually have to take the reins. horrible? no. just not ideal. theoretically, the coordination should be my job. it was offered to me. but i was pregnant and didn't know what i'd be doing. theoretically i could take the job in june. and move up. but then what?

i'm working on my business plan. but its a big jump. with no net. right now we make enough money to pay our bills. we put money away for samil and try, really hard, every month to put at least 5% of our money in the bank. my job at the institute guarantees the water, electricity, apartment maintenance and telephone being paid every month. and while i have 30-some students in my house, that money isn't always sure. i get new students, lose old students... people sometimes can't pay. tons of things.

i need to make a decision soon enough to give my little job notice. am i going to go at my own institute full-time or do i need to keep my two-day-a-week gig? deep in my heart i know that i need to go at it full-force, follow my dream. everything points to "yes". but it's a little nerve-wracking to give up my only steady, sure, source of income.

what do you think? to jump right in? or take baby steps?

peanut, peanut butter and... apples?

amalio was in the supermarket on saturday night and he saw a student we both taught in the episcopal school. the mom says hello and amalio asked the little boy if he remembered him.

amalio: hey, buddy, do you remember me?
boy: no. nu-uh.
amalio: do you remember melanie?
boy: yah. that was my best english teacher.
amalio: she's my wife. (he was probably proud that i was the best).
boy: oh yah. now i remember you... (pause) did you know that your wife is
weird?
amalio: oh yah? why?
boy: well... she eats apples with peanut butter. that's gross. see ya later!

i'm choosing to focus on the best teacher part instead of the "she's weird" part.