October 1, 2009

By Shirley

After a very generous and appetizing breakfast with the entire group, Mike and I met Roman, our most dependable driver, at 7:30. He took us a different route to show us another section of Siedlce, a kind thing to do. We arrived at Spoteczna at 8:10. Classes begin at 8:20.

Mike has a majority of boys-only three girls in his grade 2 classes. Today, scheduling sport events was the main topic which kept them interested.

My first two periods consist of 13 year old students. who at home in the USA would have conjured up terrible images and scary behavior for me. These two groups are very well-behaved and cooperative. In class they wrote original sentences following specified grammatical construction and then wrote them on the board . If there was a need to correct grammar, we did .

I followed the same plan with more difficult sentence construction in my next two classes. These two groups are divided into all boys and all girls. There were only a few relevant questions regarding grammar. These students have a good solid foundation.

We have two breaks during the morning:10 minutes after two classes and 15 minutes after the third class. Coffee, or tea with tasties are in the teachers’ room.

Tomorrow I will hear reports from each student over assigned magazine and newspaper articles. Introductions today gave each an opportunity to converse with me a few moments which is what Elizabeth (the principle) wishes us to do.

I am really enjoying working with these enthusiastic youngsters. They are eager and willing to attempt anything asked of them. They do a good job.

Thought for the Day (from Mike): "Education is the only powerful weapon we have to change the world". Nelson Mandela