Gud Spelurs and Guatemalan Security

So I found out today that my students are actually excellent spellers and that they take great pride in this skill. We had our first spelling test and out of 22 kids, 18 of them got a 100%. Three of the other four only missed one and one kiddo missed two whole words. After they took the test, I had several kids ask me as they were handing it in, “when will you give this back to us with the grades?!” I graded them during recess and handed them back at the end of the day and the kids went nuts when they saw how great they had done. I was happy to see that they were proud of themselves and hope that I can use grades to motivate them in a positive way even though it pains me to think that I have to give these little seven and eight-year-olds percentages for almost everything they do.

School was pretty hectic today and it didn’t help that we got an email in the afternoon from our general director saying that we had a mandatory meeting after school about “security.” Since we’ve already lived here for over a month we thought it was pretty unnecessary to have a meeting about safety at this point but we didn’t want to get in trouble with the big guy.  The meeting was led by a man who is currently working in Guatemala with the UN to try to increase the overall safety of the country. His tactic during the presentation was to scare the shat out of us. The first slide of the presentation read “Guatemala is the most beautiful and the most dangerous country in the world.” Next slide, “last year more than 6,478 people were brutally murdered in Guatemala. Only 1,600 civilians were killed in Afghanistan during this same time.” Okay, mister! Hold the phone! I tried really hard to pay attention to his presentation. My attempts at being a good listener were short-lived, however, when the presenter’s 6-year-old daughter started pointing a laser pointer at his face. I had to cover my face with my hands to keep myself from cracking up laughing. After the presentation, Colin said that we should take the information with a grain of salt. I think I have a pretty good gut instinct about almost all things in life and I’m fairly certain that Guatemala is one of those countries where you need to trust your gut and use your head. I really do appreciate the warnings but I refuse to live my life in fear. Plus, if I start feeling uncomfortable I’ll just ask the security guy’s daughter to fight off the criminals with her laser pointer.

So some funny things my students have done this week and last:

            1. While asking for predictions during a read aloud, one student confidently raises his hand and says, “Miss Hannah! I am blooding!” The best part about this story is I totally lost it and started laughing in the middle of the lesson. My kids did not understand why I was laughing, but they thought it was so funny that I couldn’t stop and they all started laughing too. We had a moment and it was great.

            2. I burped in the middle of a sentence yesterday (I could NOT help it, it shocked me just as much as my kids!) and then my kids just died laughing. It was really hard to get them to focus again because I was laughing too. I mean, come on, it’s pretty funny :)

            3. I had a naughty kid do a sneaky thing this weekend. He was calling people bad names last week and I wrote a note to his mom about it in his agenda so she could be aware of his behavior. When I checked his agenda yesterday to see if she had written anything back to me, I saw that the page was missing! The little rascal tore it out so his mom wouldn’t see the note! Oh, he got is so much trouble. He had to talk to the principal AND we had to call his mom and explain to her what happened. He was in tears for most of the day but it seems that he is already trying to improve his behavior.

            4. Today when we were working with flashcards, I kept asking my students to tell the answers in different voices (i.e. the lowest voice you can make, plugging your nose, a southern accent (which they had NO idea what I was talking about), etc.) and when I got to the “whisper voice” one of my kiddos screamed his answer. This kid is the smallest, funniest kid in the class and I think he genuinely mistranslated what I said and thought I wanted him to scream. It took every bit of strength in my body to not burst out laughing. Like, my lip was quivering I was working so hard to keep a straight face. I just adore my class!

I just got off skype with Allison and she is like 99% certain that she is coming to visit in October. OH MY GOSH!!! I can’t even contain my excitement right now! I’m really hoping that we will have a car by then so I can show her all over the place but no matter what we are going to have a total blast.  My first visitor—yippee!!!

Okay its is really late and tomorrow is my long day so I must go. Lets hope this consistent blogging streak continues!