My name is McKenna. This is my blog of my chronicles living in Puebla, Mexico teaching with the ILP program from January- April of 2011. What a GREAT experience I had!

Monday, January 10, 2011

First Day of School

I've got my lunch pack packed, my boots tied tight, I hope I don't get in a fight. Ohhhhh back to school

Name that movie!

Greetings everyone from my humble room, which looks like this...




Soccer posters of our brother Alonzo's adorn our walls. This is technically his room but he goes to a private LDS school in Mexico City and is away most weeks.


Our closet space and end of the bunk beds.

That's right. BUNK BEDS!

So fun.


Mine is the top bunk (the nicely made one, eh em Carly) and of course our Office calendar currently featuring Dwight K. Schrute.
No better way to feel at home then have Dwight stare at you while you're sleeping...


Lesson planning.




First Day of School!
Today was the first day of meeting our kids and introducing ourselves to what we are going to be spending most of our time doing here. The kids were absolutely adorable, albeit a little shy with a fresh batch of new teachers, but they were so well behaved, it was wonderful! This is Carly and I before school started, in our awesome teaching polos.


And after school ended and we had cleaned up. I said it was great, I didn't say it wasn't tiring..


This is Carly's classroom on the top floor of the school. She teaches the youngest batch of kids, mostly trying to get them used to speaking English, not as much comprehension as it is practicing the muscle movements and memorization.

My classroom is downstairs in the kitchen area. Our school is quite small, and doubles as a living space for our local coordinator Moroni (pronounced Moronee here) so we work with the space that we have. I will put up more pictures tomorrow of my school and the past few days we have been here.

My class roll:
Aylen
Cesar
Constanza
Luciana
Diana 
Gerrardo
Aranza
Gerlinda

My job is teaching the kids to read and practicing their functional fluency. The better they speak, the better they read so we go back and forth between word skill practice (consonants, digraphs, phonograms and prefix/suffixes) and activities that require extensive discussion.


Lesson planning is turning out to be a little bit more challenging than I expected, but its honestly a blast. I love teaching the kids, but its just so hard not to be friends with the little munchkins! Seriously, they're adorable. I would put pictures up, but I don't want to get sued or anything..

Fun fact: Saying goodbye to a group of people takes about 20-30 minutes because you kiss and hug each individual before you go. It is very endearing.
Fun fact: You ever head the "If it's yellow let it mellow.." phrase? That applies here.
Fun fact: I am going to get fat from all the scrumptious-ness that is served in this home.

Zumba, anyone?