I woke up and did not want to go to school. I packed up all of my things and checked out of the hotel but left my luggage at the front desk since they needed me checked out by 1 and I wouldn't be back until at least 3. Then I got on the bus and got to the school right at 9, so I was just barely on time. Once I got there, I was much happier though. I was around people that shared a common purpose and I felt more at home there than at the hotel.
I spent the first couple hours unpacking more things and configuring my computer: got a new desktop, downloaded 3 themes, installed a post-it note application and tried to prepare for my classes. If I have an average of 20 students per class, I will be teaching 540 different students each week. Isn't that crazy? For camp, it took me about 1.5 day to remember 30 students names but it is much easier when you are leading ice-breakers and can associate their names with something. I have 40 minutes per class, which really give me about 25-30 minutes because they have to get situated and straighten up before they leave. Gaby is going to really help me though as she will be in my class for the first week. And Pablo emailed me his lesson plans from last year so that really helps out too. So more on this later once I get into it.
At 11:30 Melody (the director of the school) gave a fantastic presentation on bullying and how to recognize it. I am fascinated with how we as humans interact with each other and that is one of the things that excites me most about teaching: I will see these behaviors developing and I might even see how what I do impacts how someone looks at the world. She showed a really neat documentary of a group of girls and how they bully each other. Everything is about power and how they are preceived. It was also really interesting that the statistics show that boys bully more often than girls, but a girl's bullying is usually more damaging. Boys tend to bully more with physical actions and girl with emotional or mental actions. It was also interesting to note how girl's bullying is changing. Girls today physically bully a lot more than their parents and grandparents did.
The kids are mimicing how their parents interact and it is usually really hard for the parent to recognize that it is even happening. How a kid acts around his/her parent is completely different than how s/he acts around their friends. And because kids are not taught properly how to "fight" everything is left to code. So much of it would be cleared up by asking/telling the person directly about what is bothering them.
It is so important to address because if it is corrected early it won't form into a bad habbit and we will have better citizens.
My paper work is still not done and so I waited for Felicitas to come back to the school since she needed my actual passport in order to get my work visa processed. I really don't like not having it on me but if I want to get paid, it must be done. She then gave me a ride back to the hotel which was really nice. Eréndira was going to bring me to look at some houses but ended up having to leave so I have an appointment tomorrow with someone. If that doesn't work, I'll just keep looking. Now I'm off to find out where Tomas lives so I can stay there for the weekend and I don't know if I'll have internet, so I might not get to update this for a while.
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