Some Downs, Lots of Ups!

As Ryan and I were driving home from school a few days ago, I mentioned that I hadn't posted any updates to our blog in quite some time.  I think sometimes it is difficult for me to know what our "readers" really want to know about our time here in Honduras.  Being teachers here at AFE, more than anything, I feel like we don't always have those opportunities to experience something radical or at least to me, "blog worthy."  Another reason I haven’t written anything is because I felt I had more disappointing things to share than were celebratory.  For those of you who don’t know, we lost our 11^th graders (AFE’s senior class).  It was their decision to stop coming, and I don’t know much more than that.  I can only continue to pray for them and invest my time in those students who wake up every morning and choose to come to school.

I guess I will share a few little short stories about what happens in my classroom with my tenth grade students whom I have learned to love so much, Maoly and Douglas (to the left).  I have mostly given power point lectures where from that, I can start mini conversations to help with the concepts that might be a little more abstract or to discuss processes in biology and chemistry further.  The power point gives me a great prompt as to the verbs I am going to use in the discussion, too!  I have had the opportunity, thanks to a generous donation, to complete labs with my students with microscopes and DNA model kits.  It is incredible to me how much these activities aid in learning!

Project of Comparing a Cell to AFE

Everyone always asks how my Spanish is coming along…I would say I can get any concept across that I need to even if I have to explain it in a round-about way.  However, I have made a few mistakes!  One day I was trying to remember the prefixes for describing covalent compounds (mono, di, tri, etc).  It was the compound SF₆.  I couldn’t remember “6,” so I blurted out sexo fluoruro azufre.  Yep, I just said “sex” in class.

Another moment that made me smile.  Douglas came into my classroom and asked to borrow a whiteboard marker, I gave it to him a little suspiciously since I know most of the students just want to draw!  But when I walked into the classroom where Douglas went, he was teaching Maoly what she missed in my biology class the day before.

We have been having some fun lately in chemistry class because we are getting into balancing equations and the concept of moles.  We do a million problems a day and my students keep asking me to make up new problems.  Recently, Maoly has been putting things away after class and said to me, "I had so much fun today!"  Even though she says she wants to become a psychologist, I think we have a little chemist in the making!  There hasn't been one day where they haven't left my classroom saying "Gracias, Erika," leaving me with a huge smile.