OK - we haven't been very good at updating this blog so far, so we are going to take a different approach. We've figured out that it's a lot easier to post several pictures to Facebook for everyone to see, adding a caption here and there, rather than trying to write a blog post centered around one or two pictures. So, if you want lots of pictures, check out Emily's or Erik's profile page on Facebook. We're going to try to update this more regularly with descriptions of what is going on with our day-to-day lives.
Anyway, things are good here. We're about two months into school, and are definitely settled in to a normal school-year routine. School starts at 8:45 every day and ends at 3:30. We all leave for school around 7:45 or 8:00. The boys just started walking to school this week (about 1/2 mile). Emily gets there by 8:00 to get ready for the school day, and Erik's playground duty starts once the kids get there around 8:15. The morning 4-square games on the playground can get pretty intense. Emily's classroom is the last door on the left in the photo.
8:45 - 9:00 is morning assembly. Responsibility for the morning assembly rotates among the teachers weekly - usually a good bit of singing or other activities to work on the kids' language skills, followed by the Dominican version of the pledge to the flag. Our kids are starting to pick up a few lines here and there (it's a lot longer than the U.S. pledge) - they like the end where they can yell "¡Libertad, Libertad, Libertad!"
From 9-10:30 is intensive English class with the students grouped by ability. Emily has the highest level non-native speakers (mostly 5th-7th graders), some of whom are approaching fluency. Our friend Cameran has the other end of the spectrum - kids who have had no exposure to English and are learning their ABCs! Emily's class just got done working on contractions and prepositions, and is now moving on to adjectives and adverbs. Our kids are in a class with all native English speakers (there are 7 of them) - the others have been raised bilingual, so our kids are the only ones in the school that can't speak Spanish fluently. Each week, all of the students get 3 hours of Spanish and 3 hours of Sociales (Social Studies) taught in Spanish by Dominican teachers. Between the classes in Spanish and the playground and the fact that none of the kids in our neighborhood speak English, the kids are really starting to pick up a lot of Spanish.
After the intensive English in the morning, the rest of the days are spent with a mix of math, Spanish, Sociales, science, PE, homeroom, and lunch and recess. Most of the time, lunch is meat, rice and beans with a spaghetti day and a ham and cheese sandwich day once a week or so.
