Will you survive?

It's late, so I don't have time to wax eloquent. I put together the materials to begin "English Survivor" on Monday. I divided each class into 5 teams. They will be given tasks on Monday to complete in their free time and submit on Friday. The tasks are activities like tongue twister writing, parts of speech practice, and reading comprehension. Joash made my nifty logo. :)

In the world of Prince Edward, he was absent for two days because he was playing a war game at recess and apparently had "internal injuries" on his leg. He needs an award for most dramatic. Good grief.

Happy Birthday to Me

This post is a few days late, but that's ok! It's exam week at school and I don't have to really teach until Thursday. Our official time is until 12 noon, but today I am staying late to do extra work. I have a review class with the kids on Thursday and I give them their test on Friday and then it's almost time for 2nd quarter to start! Ahhh! I quite enjoy these quiet days of writing lesson plans and not teaching them. Oh wait, I haven't actually written a lesson plan yet for next quarter. Anyway, that's boring stuff...

Last Friday I turned 24. Time flies! I think I need to find another country for next year because I tend to not be consistent about where I spend my birthdays. In 2007, I was on campus. In 2008 I was in Manila and we celebrated my 21st birthday at Jollibee. How cool is that! In 2009, I was beginning student teaching in Davao. In 2010, I was watching the sun set along the Zambezi River in Africa. This year... I was trying to prepare 68 third graders to take their test the following week.

One of my classes knew the day before my birthday that my birthday was Friday. The other two classes found out because the Chinese teacher squealed on me. The class that knew had all made me cards. They're a crazy class because they're all high-energy, talkative, and excitable, but they're also the most loving and the most fun in spite of how hard it is to accomplish anything in that class.

Time for a random funny kid story:
One of my kids in the crazy class is quite a little squirt but he has more energy than the bigger kids. He's always trying to be helpful all the while completely ignoring his own personal responsibilities. He will run from desk to desk opening everyone's books to the right page for them while he doesn't even have his book out of his bag yet.

Oh yeah, story inside a story:

Prince Edward's drama gets worse and worse. I think I mentioned the time he injured his arm and had a bandage the size of Mexico on it and he was moaning while writing? Well earlier last week, he had an ingrown toenail. He was walking around school with a massive bandage the size of one of the Chocolate Hills. Then on Thursday, another kid turned around and grazed his eye with his book. It wasn't anything all that sudden or violent and the Prince didn't actually make any noise. The next thing I knew, the one-eyed prince was demanding to go see the nurse. He wouldn't even open his eye for me so I could see if he really was injured or not. It was English class and not theater class, so I sent him to the nurse to get him to stop acting like his eye was out of its socket. I didn't even see him until the end of the day and he had a massive eye patch. I dismissed the incident because I knew he was just overreacting.

Back to the story about the helpful little squirt. On Friday, the homeroom teacher asked Squirt to go fetch another classmate. Curiosity killed the cat, but Squirt never learned that lesson.

"Why, teacher???" he demanded.
"Just go get him!"

He disappeared and returned a bit later without the kid he was sent to fetch. With him was another boy who I think had actually been hanging around the faculty room before Squirt even showed up. FINALLY the right kid came along and his homeroom teacher wanted to ask him about the eye incident with Prince Edward. Meanwhile, Squirt planted himself right next to the teacher to be in on the conversation. He was quickly informed that it was none of his beeswax and the Squirt turned around and picked the other boy to blame: "I TOLD YOU!!! GO OUT!!!" as if that kid had anything to do with it.

Back to the eye story. Prince Edward's dad called absolutely livid about his son coming home with an eye patch. They had taken him to the hospital and he was absent on Friday because of that. I told my side of the story and even the nurse said that the eye patch wasn't even needed, but the kid kept insisting that his teacher (i.e. me) told him to go get an eye patch. Did not. In spite of lying about the needed eye patch, he refused to name which teacher had "told" him to do that. He also did tell his parents what subject in which the incident happened. Sneaky little drama-boy. In short, the Prince needed eye drops every 4 hours for his virtually non-existent eye injury.

Anyway, on Friday night, the Arcibals came over to help celebrate my birthday. Our families have been close for years and we have many great memories of sleepovers and game nights with them. We had been trying to get together for a while, but scheduling was a problem. My birthday was a good excuse and we were all able to have a good time of sweet fellowship.

Let your heart be broken...

In my not-so-vast teaching experience (time-wise), I have still had a rather vast experience culturally. I randomly taught 2 weeks in a Filipino Christian school when I was still in college. I taught 3 weeks in inner-city Philadelphia for practicum. I taught 7 weeks in a missionary kid school in the Philippines. I taught 6 weeks in a middle-class suburban public school in Pennsylvania. I taught 3 months in a correspondence school for 6 children of hospital staff in the middle of nowhere in Zimbabwe. The majority of the kids that I teach now come from families with more money than most people I've met. Talk about a wide spectrum of kids!

I just went through some of my posts from Urban Seminar and Student Teaching. When I did Urban Seminar, I taught 4th graders who had seen drive-by shootings or who had lost relatives due to gang wars. Some of them were immigrant kids. Most of them lived in broken homes. Most of them came from poor families. I also did a one week practicum in a public school near college and some of the kids in the ESL class were refugees from Liberia who had seen more death and violence in their 9-year-old-life than most people in America have ever seen live. I tutored in the innercity and dealt with a violent 8-year-old who told me he would cut my leg off, and from the tone of his voice, he could have been an 18-year-old and had he had a saw on him, he probably would have cut my leg off.

Give me your eyes for just one second
Give me your eyes so I can see
Everything that I keep missing
Give me your love for humanity
Give me your arms for the broken hearted
Ones that are far beyond my reach.
Give me your heart for the ones forgotten
Give me your eyes so I can see


When I taught in the MK school, I had a boy who came from a missionary family, but his life was pretty chaotic. He had so many emotional needs. He could come to school one day and be happy and cheerful and funny and then he could come to school the very next day sullen, violent, and uncooperative. I fell in love with that child. He responded so well to love. 


When I was in Africa, I held the hands of HIV positive orphans. I spent afternoons with a woman who was the second wife of some guy. She worked her fingers to the bone and still came to cook for the kids of HIV positive orphans and show them attention and love that they needed. I taught beautiful little children who didn't have a lot in life. 


I wanted to teach in a school where kids came from a less-wealthy background. I guess I just always thought that would be the best place to live out "teaching ministry" to the fullest. God had other plans. I got hired in a school made up of kids who have never faced starvation or any physical need. My kids talk about their iPads, cruises, and ski trips in Colorado. My kids bring imported Goldfish to school for snacks. I started the year with the kind of, "Oh brother... what am I doing here with kids that come from another world that I can't even relate to!" 

Let your heart be broken for a world in need

Feed the mouths that hunger,

soothe the wounds that bleed.

Give the cup of water, and the loaf of bread.

Be the hands of Jesus, serving in his stead.

Here on earth applying principles of love.

Visible expression, God still rules above.

Living illustration of the living word,

to the minds of all who've never seen or heard.

Blest to be a blessing, privileged to care,

challenged be the need, apparent everywhere.

Where mankind is wanting, fill the vacant place.

Be the means through which

The Lord reveals His grace.

Add to your believing deeds that prove it true,

knowing Christ as Savior, Make Him Master too.

Follow in His footsteps, go where he has trod;

In the worlds great trouble risk yourself for God.

Let your heart be tender and your vision clear;

See mankind as God sees, serve Him far and near.

Let your heart be broken by a brothers pain;

Share your rich resources, give and give again.

I love that hymn. I always applied that hymn to situations like the inner-city or Africa. My kids don't have wounds that bleed. My kids don't have hungry mouths. (They are well-fed and it's obvious!) But I've come to realize that my heart needs to be broken for their needs. The hands and feet of Jesus take a different form in this school, but I still can be the hands and feet of Jesus. I have kids who have internal wounds that bleed just as much as a physical wound. I have kids who are starving for true love and attention just as much as a hungry kid in Africa. I have kids who ask me questions like, "Will I go to Hell if I don't go to church because my parents don't go to church?" Their spiritual need is just as deep as the spiritual need of a kid in inner-city Philadelphia. I can still be a living illustration of the living word to these kids. I have also learned that contrary to what I thought, many come from non-Christian or nominally Christian backgrounds. 

Service to God does not always take the form that we might think it should take. Service to God is not optional and based on circumstances. It must be constant. Maybe we don't understand why God places us in certain situations, but that doesn't really matter. What matters is that we are serving Him to our fullest, letting our hearts be broken for the lost around us, following Christ, and taking great risks for Him.

For Kaitlyn and anyone else who wants to know...

In the first quarter, I think we've had 3 (possibly 4) rain days and 2 half-rain-days. Last Tuesday was a half-day, followed by a full day off. This week we had all day Tuesday off and a half-day today. Supposedly there are 3 more storms headed our way before the month is out. Now if only we'd get a good couple rain days in the MIDDLE of 2nd quarter, or all rain days during parent observation week............

The only reason I have Twitter...

Well as you can obviously see, Tuesday brought another rain day! It was raining a lot in the night and I kept checking my phone to see if I got a text about a cancellation. The thunder and anticipation of possible rain day did not allow for a good night's rest, but by 5am, there was no news of cancellation. Providentially, my mom had to go somewhere today, so she was going to bring me to school. When I commute to school, I leave at 5:45. Today I was supposed to leave at 6:20. At 5:55, I got a text that said DepEd had canceled school in Metro Manila. If I had already left, I would have already been on the last jeep. Not only that, but I don't check my phone while traveling. I was very happy that I hadn't gone to school for nothing. 

Since I was already dressed, I went along to Makati with my mom and hung out in a coffee shop while she went somewhere. I got my 68 quizzes graded! I found out that I focus a lot better in a public place like a coffee shop. Maybe it's the quiet buzz of people around me, but not people I know. I hope my kids don't have red pen anxiety because I used a lot of it. Should have taken a picture of  my new red pen BEFORE I graded all those quizzes... I didn't have my camera with me, but my cellphone takes decent pictures and then you just cheat and edit them. Hahahaha.

Days off are not good for me because I eat random junk. When I'm at school, I barely eat. Good diet, eh? I was waiting for my mom so of course I had to get my favorite Dunkin Donuts donut... the kind that they DON'T have in the States (still upset about that). McDonald's seems to keep their "I'm lovin' it" slogan internationally, but obviously DD can't take their "America Runs on Dunkin'" overseas. We don't run Dunkin'. I think the Philippines runs on fishballs, but that could just be a my own interpretation after passing a fishball stand every few feet. (Exaggeration) The point is, I don't know if DD has a slogan here.

 

Anyway, that's all folks!