Living The Good Life

I hate to make this post all about teaching, you know Dave hears enough about it at home, but the fact of the matter is that school has started and, therefore, completely taken over my life.  In the states I had an outlet for this kind of obsession, it was called a team.  We all had the same kids, met everyday, worked together, and daily had the chance to share (some may say vent) the going ons of the day. That is not so here.  I am my team.  It really can't be helped; our school is pretty small with only 200 or so kids for grades nursery to 12.  Every secondary teacher has five different subjects they are prepping for each day.  There really isn't time to talk over ideas, share discoveries, or spill the more shocking things kids do.  (You remember Alex, the kid who actually shocked himself?  Good times) So, lucky you--you get to hear all about what is on the mind of an overseas middle school teacher.  I'll try to keep it short. What I am loving right this moment: **   Mech...

I know that Living the Good Life has been silent for the last couple of weeks but there is good cause for that.  Somehow, and I'm not really sure how it happened but I suspect I was hit over the head with some large object, I agreed to run an English Camp at InterAmerican the last two weeks. Oh. My. Goodness. To say the enterprise was monumentally stressful, would be to put it lightly.   Try to imagine 15 continually rotating volunteers from InterAmerican Academy plus 70 children from a nearby community between the ages of five and fifteen, add to that the fact that the participants only speak Spanish and the leader (that would be me) only speaks English.  What does this equal?  Complete and utter chaos. The original plan was for the Junior Honor Society to plan and organize the entire two week, yes I said two weeks, event.  Living in a land of hopes and dreams, I believed that this would happen rather smoothly.  I made sure the kids had resources to plan the ten day lessons, I hel...