Belize

This week with my small group math activities I worked with number recognition with the younger students and multiplication with the older students. With the students working with the number recognition it seemed as if they were working simply with memorization. There is no reason behind why a number has the name that it does, but that is just the way we know it. There did seem to be some thinking when the students were putting together the hundreds chart, but not as much when it came to them putting 1-10 in order. I noticed often times that the students would simply guess the answers. This didn't only happen during the math activities, but when we went into the classrooms and observed any subject the teacher may have been teaching.  We knew coming down to Belize that the education system was different as well as the students learning abilities and styles, but there were still things that surprised me. This week one thing that surprised me was that some of the students struggled

This week in Belize was different in the sense that we got the chance to travel and basically see the entire country. Going from San Pedro to San Ignacio to Punta Gorda made me realize that even within such a small country with the same population as Wilmington alone, there are a wide variety of people. One of the overarching qualities of the people of Belize is that they all have the desire to help anyone and everyone. Even though we are tourists and minorities here, there have been so many people that just stop to offer us help with the simplest of tasks. That is one thing that I wish to take home and implement into my own classroom. I've learned that the younger kids are generally that way at home, but as they get older they stop helping other people and seeing everyone as their friends. I want to be able to tell stories of my trip here in Belize and how the people, children, and adults, act towards each other. I can only hope that this will be something that other teachers noti

 Working in and with the schools this week has been quite the experience. It has opened my eyes to many things that I may or may not do in my own classroom. During the week we were able to set up a mock classroom and act as teachers. During those days we had 10 students in the classroom and it was more challenging than I expected, but it I felt as if I adapted to the children from each group depending on not only their age but their skill level as well. I feel that is a good skill to have because we may have all the same age students in our classrooms later, but there will always be a multitude of skill levels among the students. Being able to adapt the way you speak and the things that you have them do will be extremely useful when creating small groups. Generally, there will be a teacher-led small group and that is where the adaptation to skill level comes into play. During this first week in Belize, it has been very apparent that San Pedro is a very small place and that every

We have been in Belize for almost two days. The first day was full of travel to get from home to San Pedro. After landing in Belize City, we took a taxi to get to the water taxi. The taxi ride was rather interesting and seemed as if there wasn't a care in the world as to how the driving was going as long as we made it to our destination on time. Once we arrived at the water taxi, we had time to spare so we decided to eat lunch. I think that I was scared to immerse myself in cultural food, so I ended up getting just a cheeseburger. The food was wonderful as well as the service we received. We finished eating and got onto the water taxi. The boat was much smaller than I expected, but not a bad ride. It was 1:30 in the afternoon, so I feel like that was a busy time for the water taxi and they try to get as many people on the boat as possible. Once on the boat, we knew it was about an hour and a half trip, so it was a good time to lean on our bags and get a bit of a nap in. We arri