School Open House and More

Since I teach both Primary (PreK, Kinder1, Kinder1, PreFirst) and Elementary (1st-5th) I had to go to two open houses. The first one was Elementary on Wednesday night and only about 8 parents came to my class. On Thursday night it seemed like every parent from every class was there. I spoke to each group in Spanish and showed them some of the things I was teaching their kids or the games that they like to play. It was pretty fun but it also makes me want to do more and there is always that issue with time and not having enough of it.

Ana Catalina is a really fun teacher in Primary but her husband got a really good job offer in the US and so she had to move. So I went out with her and a couple of other teachers to an Italian restaurant on Wednesday in between getting off school and doing the open house. I have her son in my class too and he is great. I'm going to miss them.

When I left the open house, I was asking people for a ride home and I remembered that someone told me that Blanca lived near La Calma. So I went up to her and another teacher and asked Blanca, "Do you live in La Calma?" Her face changed from a smile to one of shock. "Do I live in la cama? What do you mean by that?" Her friend and I were laughing really hard; me more out of embarrassment for my bad pronunciation. La cama means bed and so you can imagine the confusion.

On Thursday, in between getting off work and the open house, I went out to eat with some more teachers to a more traditional place and tried a traditional dish - Pozole. It's like soup with meat, onions, some type of corn and lettuce. It was really good. And then after the Open House a bunch of us went to eat at Applebees. I know, why go to an American restaurant in Mexico? But then again, why not? It was me and like 6 or 7 married women. The conversations were hilarious. I heard stories about a teacher that wore her pants really low and so her butt crack was always showing. And then they talked about how sometimes it is sexy if you wear a thong. But one time that teacher was hugging a student and her pants slid down so much that her pubes were showing. Probably not good for the kids hahah.

Today, I took the Exani III, which is like the GRE in the states but all in Spanish. I didn't stress over it because I figured I do bad and so I'd just try my best. I didn't have any time to study and I didn't think I'd improve my Spanish skills that dramatically in a week. Anyway, I really hate tests like this. I don't like sitting in one place for 4 hours...it's so boring. I knew I had a better chance at doing better on the math portion and so that is where I started. And I think I got most of those correct, but the verbal questions I had a lot of trouble with and didn't get through them all. And I should have just put random bubbles but I ran out of time. Oh well. At least tomorrow I'm taking the TOEFL.

So I had homework this week for the precourse I'm taking to get into the Master's Program. Though I don't really like this course so much, one of the readings was really interesting and here are some quotes from it:

Ultimately, information literate people are those who have learned how to learn. They know how to learn because they know how knowledge is organized, how to find information, and how to use information in such a way that others can learn from them. They are the people prepared for lifelong learning, because they can always find the information needed for any task or decision at hand (American Library Association, 1989, p. 1).

Technology is also shifting students’ learning experience from simple knowledge acquisition to knowledge construction through working together, problem solving and getting solutions they did not know in advance (Leon, 2004, p. 9).