School and Teaching

Here are a couple more school observations:  First, one of the most popular words students say is a form of the word "mentira" which means lie.  Usually they will just shout "mentira!" at one another if someone says something they don't believe it's true or they'll call each other "mentiroso/a", or liar.  Pretty sure not a day goes by that I don't hear the word at least once.  Second, boys cry way more than girls do.  I can only remember seeing girls cry a few times whereas the boys cry over the littlest things.  I'm pretty sure they do it just for attention, but back home if a boy wants attention you most definitely would not see him crying about it.  Here is an example of two boys, in 5th grade, crying today.  As we all know, hitting each other is no big deal in the school so it wasn't surprising when two boys were punching each other.  One boy started to cry and the teach wrote the other boy up for it.  Basically all he has to do is get his parents to sign the paper.  So the boy who hit the other boy started crying because he was written up.  Boys.

This week I'm talking about geography and oceans in the 2-6 grade classes and the days of the week and months in my first grade class.  I feel like this is the most interactive so far the children have been although some of them still don't listen at all.  In my first grade class I gave them a more difficult worksheet (for them at least) where they had to put the months in order and rewrite the word and also unscramble the days of the week.  You definitely feel proud of yourself when you know that kids are learning something and once they understand what they have to do they do it all by themself.  Even though the kids still behave badly and it takes forever for them to be quiet before I can start going over the lesson it still makes me happy that they are (hopefully) learning something and I'm the one teaching them!