Monday, February 18, 2008

SchoolHouse and CT Duca

A few new things have happened here in good old Mexico.

First: SchoolHouse
Schoolhouse is a school run by my "aunt" that teaches English. It is somewhat similar to joy's school where the teachers all speak in English so the kids can learn. It is somewhat different in that the students may still speak spanish, however, they must try as much as they can to speak in English. Anyways, what is going on with this, is I am going ot be helping out there every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon, and I will be getting paid for it as well! I am happing with the preschool/kindergarten class. I went once last week and it was very fun, the kids are adorable, crazy but adorable, and my "cousin" is in the class. It will be a bit of an "english break" for me, but I will still be learning Spanish as many of the kids in my class cannot speak well in English yet, so they answer questions in Spanish and we have to help them out. Anyways, I am pretty excited for this because I love hanging out with kids and I will be earning a bit of spending money!

Second: CT DUCA
CT DUCA is a school for students with Downss Syndrome where I am doing my ethnographic study. This was not exactly what I had in mind, but is turning out to be interesting. I have only gone one time and sat in on the "middle ages" This consisted of a small class of 6 kids ages ranging from 6-8. Most of these students do not know how to speak quite yet so that is a main goal, to get them to talk and have them learn simple things like birds and numbers. What was most interesting to me from that one day, was not the manner of teaching, but the manner of punishment. It was perfectly fine to use physical punishment. I do not know what the other classes did for punishment, but my teacher consistently pulled a child by the ear back to their seat, or when one of the students hit another, she told them to hit back, and harder. This is something that I cannot comprehend, what are we teaching when we just tell people to hit back, certaintly not that hitting is not acceptable! I am excited to see how the other classes go!

This weekend was wonderful to say the least. More to come on that later including photos. But we went to the beach, stayed in a cute little hotel and simply relaxed and got away from the crowded city of Merida, just what we needed!

te quiero

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

i'm glad to hear you're having such a great time! earning extra spending money is always good! :-) and I don't know why that teacher would do that... CRAZY!!! well, later gator!

heather said...

wow. thanks for sharing about it. sounds like a pretty cool experience for you to be having--and extra cash sounds wonderful!

Shanna said...

thanks for updating!! way to go getting a job!! make sure you buy me a pretty cool present with that extra spending money!! :) jk