The Countdown Begins!

My fave English teacher, Lakshmi.
Going to miss this lady!

T-8 days until I'm back in the States, and I can't wait! I am wrapping up the chapters I've been teaching and students are reviewing for their summative assessments (across all Delhi Public Schools).

Saturday was Teacher Appreciation Day. I wish every day was Teacher Appreciation Day. Students decorated our room and showered us with gifts, candy and cards. Then, students walked around to all the staff rooms and fed us cake (like they took a chunk with their hands and put it up to our mouths). Then, they touched our feet, which is a sign of respect for elders. At night, there was a festival for teachers with live music, games, food and dancing. I won a prize for randomly wearing a headband and Andrea won for best dancer. The teachers were so much fun outside of school! Laughing and taking pictures. Great memories. One teacher's flash wouldn't go off and a group of us were trying to hold our poses and smiles. The gym teacher, exasperated, shouted a string of Hindi words. I was like "I have no idea what she said..." Andrea finished my sentence

Teacher's Day haul.

with..."but I was thinking the same thing!" Hilarious, and true. You often don't need words to communicate.

School Updates

Science: We are finishing up the Our Body chapter, and Sammy the skeleton is looking healthier and more colorful. Students LOVED the circulatory system activities--squeezing a crumpled paper ball 90 times to simulate the heart pumping and taking their pulses after marching in place for one minute. After the paper ball exercise, I asked, "Class, aren't we so glad our heart does this for us automatically? That we do not have to think about pumping

I had Andrea recording my lesson,
so we were actually able to capture
this moment on video!

our heart every second?" They looked at me blankly, so I repeated, "Aren't you glad for your heart?!" They all started clapping and I lost it laughing in front of class. Apparently, they thought I said, "Clap for your heart."

Social Studies: The students enjoyed creating thinking maps (circle map, bubble map, tree map) on the different aspects of culture in Chennai. This sparked an idea for SS in my future classroom. Why not have country "boxes" from all over the world? A small group of students would discover different artifacts in their box and have to research and present to the class why each artifact is significant. For example, an India box might contain a some tea leaves, a sari, an elephant god figurine, etc.

English: We read a play called Clever Carla, which taught students not to be greedy. The students acted out the different roles with great enthusiasm!

Okay, so Sammy's not "medically"
accurate, but the kids love him,
and can identify all the parts!

Math: In an attempt to make Roman numerals (yawn) more interesting, I had students find a secret message. They could decode the message only by first identifying the Roman numeral that would unlock a letter.

Teacher Appreciation Day celebration.

This weekend, we attended a seminar at church and had lunch at the pastor's family's house. Then, we hung out with Andrea's cooperating teacher, Anu, and her family for dinner. Anu's husband works for the Railway, so we saw the only railway training facility in India and walked around the gardens. Then we played basketball with her daughter, Harsha, who is a bundle of energy. I taught Harsha every ball handling trick I could remember (Pistol Pete, anyone?) and we had a blast!

 Today was another rough day with my students. Both Andrea and I are struggling with lack of consequences/no behavior management system. Andrea so eloquently described it: "It's like an abusive relationship. [The students] say they won't hit again and that they're sorry, but just do it again the next day!" We laughed. And I didn't beat myself up over the rough day this time.