Week 1 Reflection

 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 everyone knows everyone. I have not met a single person who has not been willing to help with directions, what's good to eat or good places to hang out. The second night we were here, we went to a restaurant named Caroline's Cooking. The waitress was probably the sweetest person I've met out here so far. She told us all about the history of San Pedro and a lot about the schools here. It made me realize how lucky we are in America. There are times that people, including myself, are ungrateful for the things that we have at home. If anyone ever has the opportunity to come to San Pedro and explore their culture and work in their schools, I would highly recommend it. It's so difficult to be grateful for the things that one has without seeing how grateful others are for how little they have. 

During the second day in our mock classroom, we had three more groups, Standard 2, 3, and 4. With the Standard 4 group, there was one teacher who looked at me and said, "When we do something like this in our classroom, we do not allow them to draw pictures with it because they focus more on the drawing rather than on the writing." I was very blown away by this because no matter the age level, the students should still have an opportunity to be creative. We had the students write their story first and made sure that they used their adjectives and adverbs. Once their writing was finished, we allowed them to draw so that they had the opportunity to express themselves through art. It had the students more engaged in the activity rather than being bored writing a story. This will definitely make sure that during my time here I may be able to convince the teachers to use what they can in their classrooms to encourage creativity. The more creativity they have, the better they may do later in life.