May 20, 2010

Thought for the Day:

"It is only with the heart one can see rightly;

what is essential is invisible to the eye." –St. Exupery

At our team meeting following lunch, there was consensus that we are meeting our pre-established goals: To provide practice with English language, to build bridges of understanding and respect, to be personally enriched. members agreed that this is happening through interactions in our school environments, on the social level when we meet Polish people – drivers, cooks, principals and teachers – and even in our team interactions.

Dorota reviewed the characteristics of a strong team, which we had articulated earlier. Again, consensus on success.

We have passed the first half of our three week period. Each of us has a daily routine of teaching hours in the morning, tutoring hours on varied days of the week. We meet three times a day at our meals. Days are not set in concrete; flexibility helps to advert a sense of frustration or discouragement. Like gardeners, we plant seeds; we cannot control the factors which affect student progress, nor control the outcome of English language learning. We can offer our gifts and, as the song advises, “let it be, let it be; there will be a future, let it be.”

It was a day like all days, filled with the events that illuminate our times, and Georgianna was there, at Niwiski School! A tad scrambled, with some students at Reymontowka with a poetry competition and others in the mountains on a field trip and two third grade sections that took it upon themselves to change groups. Hence, group 1, instead of the usual students, was augmented by two students who decided to join the earlier session, probably because they could then slip away early. The nice part for Georgianna, was that group 2 had a much smaller number, so she could devote herself to individual attention to certain students, one at a time. Probably, not a positive for those students who were maybe feeling a little bit on the spot. It’s difficult and frustrating to be a third grader whose English skills are really limited to vocabulary, sentences being a whole new, overwhelming concept. But they survived and will live to tell the tale, probably in Polish.

Audrey had another good day teaching at Cisie School with Margaret, grades 4,1 and 6 today. The grade 1 students are great fun and we just take it very slow with colors and numbers and we use flash cards, that went over quite well. We sang some songs about our body parts—Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes. She asked them to color a Canadian flag for that class hadn’t done it. I took my camera today and had my picture taken of this delightful little class.

Grades 4 and 6 are always a bit more challenging. Today we continued to build on sentence structure and especially on Time using a big yellow clock with moveable hands to great advantage. They have to translate clock time in words into numerals on the face by using matching slips of paper. Margaret drove Audrey home, so they were able to continue our English conversation.

Mary Martin brought home a bouquet of flowers – yellow tulips with white roses -- which the recalcitrant First Communion class offered her as an act of contrition for their “misbehavior” yesterday – recorded in yesterday’s notes. Cook gave her a pitcher for a vase and the bouquet graces the Global Volunteers workroom table.

She adds another highlight, “Today’s driver took the same county back roads which delighted me yesterday when that driver traveled by the same shortcut. This driver, along with her daughter, Natalia, turned down a narrow lane and stopped in front of their new home. We had time for the briefest of tours, but it was a great opportunity to get a glimpse of modern design for the many new homes which are popping up over Poland.”