Struggles with the female variety

Clickbait title, right? :)

Be that as it may, in all my prior years here at CICS (two to be exact) it just so happened that I always taught all boys.

Which was great you know. Being one myself, I know more or less what to expect from boys. That's not to say I didn't encounter struggles and problems along the way. Boys are people too, and people have problems--we're not perfect, as much as we like to appear that way. :)

This year I was blessed with a classroom with 75% girls. One boy and three girls. The four most experienced students in school. Just a tad different than before.

I enjoy teaching my class--I truly do. But sometimes stuff comes up and I'm like ok, what do I do now?

Girls 1 and 2 are very good friends and they like to help each other whenever they can, which is what good friends do. No problem with that. But one side effect of that is that girl 3 often gets left to fend for herself. And that is a problem.

Which leads to girl 3 feeling insecure and doing whatever necessary for girls 1 and 2 in order to win some brownie points--like helping on homework and tests even though she knows it's against the rules.

Another challenge I have is maintaining a balance between being a friend and being someone my students can respect. Of course, I always strive to be my students' friend, have fun with them, and to love them regardless of what happens, but sometimes the time comes to stop laughing and correct a problem. Sometimes that means just a small talk, but other times it includes something more serious.

And I don't like doing this. I would much rather be a friend all the time. It's so much easier to look the other way and pretend the incident never happened. This way my students are happy and don't get angry at me, because there's hardly anything worse than to have someone upset at me.

But we all know this will not help anyone in the long run. Sometimes correction is necessary. But hopefully you can see my dilemma.

I guess the purpose of this post is to ask for your prayers--specifically prayers for wisdom. I need lots. Pray that I would be focused on my students' souls (not just on their behavior) and that God could guide me through each day doing whatever needs to be done to help them. Pray that I could have their best interests in mind and that I could come to earn my students' trust and respect.

Thank you so much for praying and God bless y'all for your support!

Elmer hard at work making what has by now become
a tradition on weekends--grilled chicken!

One of these days Miguel should be able to ride
a unicycle without support. But for now he still
hugs the walls. :)

This picture shows the entire girl population at school. They're a bit sparse. :)

Beatriz accused me of eating all the cookies (I do eat a lot). So I told her
that I would help make some to replace the ones I ate.

Either that apron is too short or I am too tall. :)

All done. They were good, too!

The little boys always try to find someone who will
roughhouse with them. So Elmer obliged. 

Not sure what he's doing, but it's funny stuff as always!

Weekend vacation at the guest house!

God is so good

You know the song, right?

God is so good
God is so good
God is so good
He's so good to me...

To be honest, there were a couple of tough times during these last couple days. But somehow, God answered my prayers even beyond my expectations. Let me tell you about all that...

Friday and this Tuesday were test days for the month of February. My students did not do so well. And that's putting it very positively. I'm still learning how to teach older students, so really some of that was my fault. But I was still disappointed. As a result of the bad scores, some of my students had quite a bunch of work to redo! (I make them redo tests that are below 70%)

However, I was able to use their poor test scores as a teaching/preaching opportunity. I told them that if they don't want to redo work and write their vocabulary words over and over and over, it might help if they take some initiative and, you know, study more maybe? Just maybe?

Skip forward to Wednesday, when we had social studies, and all of the students started busily copying down information about Panama from the keynote presentation, without any prodding from me. It would seem they got the message. Success!

Teresa was finally able to come to school again every day this week after battling with some sort of health issues, which I was really thankful for. It's just really unfortunate for a student to miss even one day of school, because there's a lot you can learn in one day. And especially Teresa, because of her great intelligence and willingness to learn (usually).

On Thursday was Bible memory day. Eduardo did much, much better than last time, writing about half of the first four verses of Matthew 5 correctly. He can still improve, sure, but I'll take it considering he only wrote one word last time and even the word he wrote was wrong. :)

Which brings me to one of the toughest experiences this week.

First, let me tell you a bit more about Beatriz and Paola. They are about two years apart with Beatriz being the older of the two. But in spite of being younger than Beatriz, Paola is ahead in school, probably due to coming to CICS when she was younger. The two are good friends, but for some reason I think Paola feels self conscious of being able to learn a bit faster, so she will either help Beatriz during schoolwork or intentionally make mistakes in her own work so she will have the worse score. I've warned the two of them over and over that they need to mind their own business during class, do only their own work, and ask the teacher if they have questions.

On Thursday morning, while writing out the Bible memory verses, the two of them were at it again exchanging signs, but this time teacher Samuel had enough. Time for a practical lesson. When recess came, Beatriz had to start all over, and Paola had to sit right in front of her, resisting the temptation to help in any way. Of course, this didn't suit the two of them, but teacher Samuel meant business, so they obeyed.

I made sure I explained clearly what they had done wrong and made sure they understood. They both said they realized their mistake and confirmed that they had accepted their punishment. Great, right?

Well, not exactly. You see, it just so happens that my students are experts at putting up a facade. So even into the afternoon and the next morning, I could tell that all was not well considering the fact that they barely looked or smiled at me.

I was really dreading school yesterday morning. I wasn't sure how it would go. But I prayed that God would continue to work in my dear students' lives, showing them areas where they could improve, and leading them to repentance.

And would you believe it, during prayer time at the beginning of the school day, Beatriz asked for prayer that she could learn to respect and obey her authorities and learn from her mistakes! I was very pleasantly surprised. How had this change come about?

Later, I expressed my gratefulness to the girls for their change of heart and for being willing to own up to their mistakes and change their attitudes. Beatriz told me she had talked with Paola and Teresa and the two of them had told her that she had made a mistake and that she needs to own up to it and move on.

Positive peer pressure like that was something I had not expected! But regardless, I thanked God for answering my prayers so directly like that.

I learned some things through this. First of all, it was a good reminder that He is still in control. And also, no matter how bad something may seem, God can always turn it around for good!

Please continue praying for these girls and for all the deaf, really. Pray that they would be open to learning from others and from God even when it's a bit humbling.

Pray also for me. I'm still new at this. Pray that I would also be able to learn from others and accept correction. Pray that God would give me lots of wisdom as I attempt to teach my students not only about math and reading, but also about life and the many challenges it brings.

Thanks everyone for your continued support! I appreciate it exceedingly. Here's your weekly dose of pictures. :)

Miguel has no idea what he's doing, but it's still fun!

It was Eduardo's birthday last week!

Kevin got a little dirty during recess I guess, so Beatriz
wanted to help him out a little.

Whenever they get the chance these two will start
wrestling and pummeling each other. Jairo usually
gets the short end of the stick. :)

Mango hunting (and eating).

Liz and Paty take a small break from studying for school to enjoy some
fresh green mangoes.

The unicycles are back!

This is not going to end well...

Hey floor, may I have my jaw back?

It's still out there at school on the floor; figuratively of course. :)

Yea this is prolly not gonna be a very long post, but I just HAD to share something with y'all that happened today.

In a previous post, I mentioned how I was making my students do a lot of memorization. Well, I have been, with mixed results.

Eduardo, one of my students, has recently (the last few years) been one of those students that do the bare minimum in order to get by without teacher getting mad. When asked if he liked school, he would almost invariably reply "nah, it's better to relax". The word "relax" is pretty much his favorite word. He almost never volunteers for anything. He hardly ever does extra work unless asked to explicitly. But it's not like he can't. The maddening thing about him is that he is so incredibly intelligent!

Anyway, so two weeks ago, I gave my students the first three verses of Matthew 5 to study. We went over it maybe once or twice during the week. They were supposed to study mostly on their own. Last week I gave him a test. He had zero correct. I gave him a big "0" on his test. No reaction. Stuffed the paper in his test and didn't even flinch. Aaaargh!

I talked to Eduardo then sometime last week about his lack of effort. I said I'll be watching him for more effort. And I emphasized over and over to my students, that it's much better to choose work that's difficult and make mistakes, than to stay in your comfort zone and get it perfect every time. And of course, when Eduardo did try, I praised him like crazy! But it didn't really seem to make a huge difference in his overall demeanor. He was just content with accepting whatever came and riding with it.

This week we reviewed the verses again like once or twice a day. Just the signs. I didn't help them practice writing the words at all. Today we had Bible class. So for review, I had three of my students each write one of the verses. Eduardo's verse was the first and the longest. I wasn't expecting much.

Eduardo gets up and starts with the first word from Matthew 5:1   V-i-e-n-d-o. "Wow, the first word at least. This might take a while", I thought. He continues writing: l-a   m-u-l-t-i-t-u-d   s-u-b-i-ó   a-l   ...

As each passing word appeared perfectly written on my whiteboard, my jaw went lower, and lower, and lower, and lower still. My hand went to my mouth...

I couldn't believe it!

When he finished, this was the result:

Viendo la multitud subió al monte y esntándose vinieron a él sus discípulos

The first verse on the board is the one that Eduardo wrote without any help.

He only made one error and he learned the spelling all by himself. I was literally in tears by the time he was done, and if you know me, you know that I never cry!

I was just so overcome with joy and surprise that I hardly knew what to do. When he turned around everyone cheered and clapped. I think Eduardo's classmates were as surprised as I was! :) His reaction? A smile and a nod. But I like to think that Eduardo was very pleased even though he would never admit it!

So join me in praising God for allowing me to to see something like this in one of my students. I don't think I will ever forget this experience. Seriously, it was exactly what I needed for today! And pray that Eduardo would continue to learn all he can and not give up. Pray that I would able to build him up and encourage him when times are tough. Pray that this would be a stepping stone to a life wrung out for Christ!