School days, school days

Happy Sunday everyone!  I finally have the time to sit down and give you all an update on what has been going on for the past three weeks.  When I got home at New Years, my internet connection was not working and it has been out for three weeks.  We just got the problem fixed a couple of days ago.

School started back up on January 7th and things have been going really well.  My students were very excited to get back to school after their three week vacation.  There is not much for them to do in Jubilee (unlike homes in the states) so they love coming to school.  My school schedule has changed this week.  We decided that my low level first graders are no longer going to be learning to read English.  It has been a HUGE struggle teaching them English and we feel that we are doing more harm than good by trying to teach them to read and write three languages.  So, that particular class will only be learning to read and write Creole and French.  My other classes will still be learning all three languages.

Instead of teaching that class English for 85 minutes a day, we cut the time down to 30 minutes.  During those 30 minutes, I am simply going to be practicing conversational English with them.  The change in my schedule has given me an extra hour of free time during the day.  So, I am filling that time by partnering with one of our new Haitian teachers.  He has no teaching experience, no classroom management skills, and he teaches simply by rote memorization.  Keep in mind, he was raised in Haiti and taught in a COMPLETELY different way than we teach in America.  So, I am basically going to be teaching someone who has zero knowledge what-so-ever about teaching.  For the rest of the year, I will be in his room helping him teach Creole and training him how to be a better teacher.  It is a big challenge, but I am really excited about it.  Please keep me in prayer as it is requiring lots of patience and baby steps.  My hope and prayer is that once he learns how to be a better teacher, he can share that knowledge with other teachers.