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!