una iguana

Here’s some fun from Friday…

I ran upstairs to get my camera at the end of the day to take some pictures of my kids during art class.  On my way past the school kitchen, something caught my eye.  It was a HUGE iguana slowly making its way to a patch of sunlight outside the door.  Until that point, I had only ever seen one iguana up close, but the magnitude of this lizard could not compare to my previous encounter! 

So, I took some pictures (in case it should run away before I could find some witnesses), and then ran to tell everyone.  We all gathered around to oooh and ahhh, and then we tried to shoo it away so the dogs wouldn’t kill it later.  But this was one stubborn iguana!  It wouldn’t move, so we got a mop and chased it.  As you can tell from these photos, the iguana would not leave without a fight.

 

 

Just another day at ESD!

perfecto

Faithful blog followers, I apologize for my recent inactivity.  I haven’t been well for a few weeks.  But now I am getting back to normal and am ready to continue…

A week ago (I had already not been feeling well for 2 weeks), I thought I was finally getting better, and then—WHAM!—I felt worse than before.  And thanks to God’s perfect timing, when I was feeling my worst and truly needing to take a sick day, I had a perfect substitute for my class.  We have a friend who is a deaf teacher of deaf students in the U.S., and she enjoys coming down from time to time to visit and work with our students.  She had recently taught a unit about myths to her own students and was eager to share this with mine.  So when I said God’s perfect timing, I meant it because we are right in the middle of our own myth unit!  It doesn’t end there, though.  I have been incorporating video-making into this unit, and this is exactly what our visitor wanted to teach.  So for three days last week, my students and I had the opportunity to watch a master teacher at work, teaching exactly what my students needed to learn!  Pretty cool, huh?

We also had a mother-daughter team visit last week, and they had planned arts-and-crafts for all the kids—which meant that all my art classes were covered for the week.  God is so good!

(And if Julia or Andrea is reading this…thanks again!)

I finally made it back to church today.  My pastor has been preaching a lot recently on the end times and life after death, and this sermon hit me, so I thought I’d share it.  He preached on Luke 16:19-31.  Perhaps this is a familiar passage to you.  It talks about a rich and a poor man who both die.  The rich man goes to hell and the poor man to heaven.  When the rich man is convinced that he will spend eternity suffering with no hope of relief, he begs Abraham to send the poor man to earth to warn his family to repent and turn their lives to God so they will not suffer the same fate.  Abraham replies that if they don’t believe the warnings from Moses and the prophets to repent, they won’t believe a dead man either.  Most of us try not to think too much about hell, but the Bible is clear that it will be eternal torture with no hope of relief.  Thankfully, we all have the opportunity to join the poor man and Abraham in heaven.  All we have to do is open our hearts to Jesus.  Something to think about…

Until next time…

los mitos

I can’t believe it’s already February.  The past two weeks in my classroom have been exhausting as teenage emotions and drama have been present in full force.  But nonetheless, we’ve been pushing forward and we’re still smiling sometimes!

Here’s a highlight from the week:

In writing class, we’ve been studying myths.  Last week my students chose a myth that they would practice and perform in American Sign Language on video.  It was a real treat to watch their progression as they learned and practiced their myths this week.  They were actually asking for more time to do so every day.  There was a lot of nervous laughter as they came face-to-face with the camera lens, but it in end, all the stories came out very well.  This has also been a good learning experience for me as I was able to see various ASL storytelling techniques. 

(I hope to post the myth videos soon.)

Please pray for en extra measure of God’s peace in our classrooms and in the lives of our students in the weeks and months to come.

contaminada

I began last week with a positive attitude because the previous week had ended on a high note.  Edwin got the highest grade in the class on his vocabulary test—proving that all along he was able to do so but lacked the commitment to studying.  All week long he repeated that this was a new year, and he was trying to make a new start.

He had appeared to turn a corner.  But just when he started making wise choices…just when he got his first A on a vocabulary test and had been doing most of his homework…just when I had told him how proud I am of him…he decided to bring alcohol to school in his water bottle.  

I saw him take the bottle into the bathroom twice to drink from it.  Then, as I unscrewed the top to take a whiff, I hoped my suspicions weren’t accurate…but they were.  Fittingly, two of our vocabulary words from last week summed up the findings:  That water was not pure; in fact someone had contaminated it!  

Needless to say, this event made for an interesting week—one with many interruptions to normalcy, but we survived.  Thanks to the creative and insightful intervention by our principal and a trusted friend, Edwin may have even learned some life lessons.

It also served as a wakeup call to Edwin’s family—for whom we have been praying for a while.  For the first time since we’ve known them, they all came to church with us—Praise the Lord!

Please pray for peace in the lives and families of our students.

risas

The newest addition to my blog is...video!

Here are my students (and Saul) performing a play.  See if you can figure out which story it is.  Forgive the shaky videography; I was laughing a little.  I hope you do too!

bienvenido de nuevo

Happy New Year!

Last Tuesday began our first week back at school.  I was so prepared—I had spent the previous five days hard at work in my classroom.  All of the little boxes in my lesson plan book were full, papers were copied, books were selected, PowerPoints were made, and science experiments were set up. 

But, of course, I barely had a full class of students.  Between family emergencies, students waking up late, and parental disinvolvement—the whole school felt a bit empty this week.  So I didn’t follow any of my tediously made plans.  The good news is, all I have to do is change the date in my plan book, and I’m ready for next week!

Although student attendance was lacking, the ESD staff was out in full force.  Last week we welcomed our snow birds.  Norm and Earlene Benson have joined us from upstate New York for another year.  They have been faithfully serving with us during the winter months for the past 14 years.  Norm is a farmer, and he fixes things around the school for us.  Earlene is a retired English teacher and helps us in our classrooms.  This year, they brought their daughter Fran with them.  Fran is a college professor.  She is our Wonder Woman—she will do anything we ask of her…with a smile!  Additionally, we welcomed our faithful volunteer, Margaret Upperman from snowy New Jersey.  She has been serving here for many, many (I don’t know exactly how many) years by cutting, sorting, counting, and redeeming our Box Tops for Education and Campbell’s Soup Labels.  Thanks to the commitment of countless people who send us box tops and soup labels, we have enough work to keep Margaret busy for months!

For anyone who keeps up with this sort of thing, Kate and I have decided to give up high fructose corn syrup this year.  I’m sharing this because you’d be surprised what you find it in.  I thought I was eating healthy granola bars, whole wheat breads, crackers, and other good foods…but I had to clean out my fridge and cabinets this new year.  So check your ingredients.  I’ve found that high fructose corn syrup is found in more “healthy” foods than junk foods that I’ve looked in.  Thankfully, I found a little health food store where I can do my shopping from now on!