On Wednesday, a boy in my class named Luigi asked if he could bring his dog into school on Thursday. I am being serious when I say that he asked me that question about one hundred times. The first twenty times he asked me, I said I was sorry and that he couldn’t bring it to school. Eventually, I would either shake my head no, or I would just ignore him. Sure enough, I walk into the classroom on Thursday morning and Luigi and his dog were there. I was worried because I thought the principal would be angry with me, but it turns out that bringing dogs to school isn’t a big deal at all. There ended up being two dogs, three baby chicks, and a turtle in our classroom that day. At Forest Hills, it would have been a huge deal for all of these animals to be at school and it’s probably not allowed anyway. Wednesday afternoon I found out that all of the classes were having a party on Thursday to celebrate Easter and the ending of the semester. Since the three standard IV teachers haven’t been around and don’t communicate with me about anything, I decided to plan a field trip to the beach. When I asked the principal about the field trip, she told me it would be okay, but she was worried about Sam. On Thursday morning, the principal called me into her office and told me that she was thinking about having Sam stay at school while we went to the beach. It just happened to be Sam’s birthday and I wasn’t going to leave Sam at school on his birthday while everyone else celebrated at the beach. I found out that Sam doesn’t get a lot of attention at home and that’s probably why he misbehaves a lot. It seems like the school doesn’t really know how to deal with Sam, so they punish him all of the time. I think Sam just needs more attention and someone to work with him one on one. At Forest Hills, there were teacher aids and classrooms for students with special needs. There is nothing like that in the schools in Belize. On Tuesday, my class was in the computer lab and they were practicing typing. I saw that Sam wasn’t typing correctly, so I went over to him and showed him the right way. I spent about ten minutes with Sam and helping him type. At first he was frustrated with how slow he was typing and he told me that he could type faster the way he usually does. After convincing him that if he continued to practice typing the correct way he would be able to type much faster, he actually tried really hard. I encouraged him and told him I was really proud of him. The smile on his face made my whole day. Anyway, I wasn’t going on that field trip without Sam and that’s exactly what I told the principal. She told me that she would ask one of the teachers to come with us.
At 10:00 my class piled onto Teacher Aidan’s golf cart. Once the boys got on the beach, they immediately started a sand war. They weren’t supposed to go swimming, but when I turned my head one of the boys jumped off the dock. Eventually all of the boys were dripping wet and covered in sand. At lunchtime, I walked to a pizza place on the beach and ordered a pie. The boys enjoyed their pizza and when everyone was finished eating we walked back to the school at 12:00. The principal told me that everyone decided to go home early, so we could leave school as well. I walked back to Pedro’s with one of my students that live near the hostel. I love talking to my students and asking them about their lives.
No comments:
Post a Comment