Thursday, November 26, 2015

A Lesson in Thankfulness

I'm not going to lie: I love my life.  I love my job.  I love my ministry. But...

NOPE, no buts!  That really is the bottom line.

Sometimes, when I think about that fact, I feel overwhelmed.  Overwhelmed with joy.  Overwhelmed with humility.  Overwhelmed with gratefulness.

I have so much to be grateful for.  Friends, family, where I live, where I work...I could go on and on.  But this blog post isn't actually about what I'm thankful for.

Thanksgiving has always been one of my favorite holidays.  Ever since I was little, there has always been something special to me about setting aside time to focus on our blessings and how God has made our lives rich (and I don't mean rich with money!)

So even though Thanksgiving isn't a Haitian holiday, I decided to take some time to discuss with my class what it means to be thankful and why it is important to have hearts that overflow with gratitude.

After discussing this, I started asking the question: If you could tell God "thank you" for one thing in particular right now, what would it be?  It started out as a question for my class, but quickly grew to incorporate other students as well.

Here are some of the things my kids are thankful for:







Saturday, November 14, 2015

The Grandeur. The Simplicity.

Every day I spend with these kids is a gift; every minute is a precious memory.
Every picture I take has a story that is begging to be told.
Every morning holds the promise of a lesson to be learned and every night carries the weight of these memories, pictures, stories, and lessons.

So here I am, on a Friday night, compiling a week's worth of...well...of everything and wondering how to put so much into a space as small as a blog post.

And with that, I give you The Friday Five in the hopes that my memories, pictures, stories, and lessons will capture both the grandeur and the simplicity of what God is doing here.


Five Moments to Cherish

1. Elle running in and sitting on my lap after school, excitedly starting to tell me all about her day, but then getting distracted by something else and telling me all about that instead.


2. High schoolers in my classroom after school telling me how much they love the new books and begging me to translate more.  Making a total mess and coming and going in a flurry of greetings and questions, broken pencils and disheveled books, English, French, Creole, and sometimes a little Crenglish.


3. Little hands stroking my hair and a quiet voice in my ear whispering “I love you so much.”

 4. Really needing to translate books and write lesson plans and get work done…but leaving that all inside during recess so that I could sit by the swings and let these girls make me smile instead.


5. Last year’s class sitting around my table – the way they used to sit around our table last year – and looking at the Shutterfly photo book I made about them.  Reminiscing about that tiny, dark, hot classroom.  Remembering books we read, crafts we made, and facts we learned.  Laughing hysterically when we got to the picture of Love Findia with her face covered in white chalk.  Being together again.



Five times I realized: “Wow, my students are growing!”

1. Getting to the final bell before realizing that Davis got through the ENTIRE day without refusing to participate.


2. Francoise bursting out in frustration when I moved his seat…until I took him aside and explained that some students need more help than he does and that by giving up his ideally-located seat, he is helping his classmate learn.  Then…Francoise agreeing to step up and be a leader in our classroom and not mentioning his seat again.

  
3. Watching my students transform into self-directed, self-regulated learners.
All year I have given students their craft supplies one item at a time.  First scissors.  Finished?  Trade me for a crayon.  Finished?  Here’s your next piece of paper.  But THIS…this was the first time they got all their supplies all at once.  And they nailed it. =) Plus it was the first time I gave them freedom with glue. (Moms and teachers - you know that's a big step!!)


4. This conversation:
“The preschool class next door is being really loud, so let’s stop here.  We can finish this workbook page Monday.”
“No, Madame Erin, let’s finish it now.  We’ll listen really carefully and we won’t get distracted.”

5. Another classroom conversation. (I would like to preface this by saying that it is not easy to teach left and right in your second language while you are mirroring your students...)
Me: "Everybody raise your right hand"
Francoise: "That's our left hand."
Davis: "That's okay Madame Erin!"
Me: "Okay, now everybody raise your left hand"
Francoise: "Right hand."
Davis: "That's okay Madame Erin!"


Five Fabulous Photos

1. We got a fan!! 


2. Goofing off at recess.


3. Millie is NOT impressed. =)


4. Got this in the mail.  Made me laugh.



5. Francoise’s drawing of our class complete with students, the carpet, Madame Erin, our smilies/saddies behavior chart, and our new fan plugged into the outlet next to the window.


Sunday, October 11, 2015

Lamou se yon Fanmi (Love is a Family)

Family.
That’s a powerful word.

What do you think of when you hear that word?  Do you think of your parents?  Your brothers and sisters?  Do you see their faces? Hear them laughing?  Are you reminded of the time your sister borrowed your favorite shirt, then accidentally spilled spaghetti sauce on it?  The time your brother gave you a hand-made birthday present?  The time your parents pinned you to the ground and tickled you until it hurt?

That’s what many of us think of as family.

Unfortunately, that’s not what everyone thinks of when they hear the word family.  Not everyone knows what a family is.

I work at an orphanage where kids come from all sorts of complicated situations.  Some were orphaned with no family to turn to and no one to care for them.  Some were abandoned by the only relatives they have.  Some have been passed from one orphanage to another their entire lives.  Some were sold into slavery.

You see, when you teach at an orphanage in Haiti, and you get to the part in your curriculum where you talk about family, you have to go into it realizing that to many of your students, the word “fanmi” (family) is an abstract – even non-existent – concept.

To approach the topic of family, my class read books about different types of families – big families, small families, biological families, adoptive families.  We discussed what families do together and how you don’t have to be biologically related to be family.  We emphasized the point that it isn't blood-relation that makes you a family.  It's love that makes you a family.



After one of our lessons, I sent the kids to their seats to draw pictures of what they like to do with their families.  That’s when Jo (the biological daughter of two of the foster parents in our children's village) looked at E (one of the residential children) and said enthusiastically, “that’s my brother!”

My heart melted.

When Jo looks at E, she doesn’t see a classmate who comes from a different town.  She doesn’t see a guest in her house or just another kid who lives with her.  She doesn’t see an orphan.

She sees a brother.
She sees family.
She sees love.






Saturday, September 12, 2015

Friday Five: Back to School Edition


Five things I learned in kindergarten this week

1.  In Haiti, the first day of school never starts on time.  Ever.

2.  Getting straw mats for my classroom was the best thing I could have possibly done.  Joining my students on the mat – instead of in a chair – was the second best.


3. Coloring is NOT an incentive for my students.  You would think I had asked them to sit in silence with their heads down by the way they reacted.

(This was try #2...24 hours after their initial reaction!)

4. Starting a new school year means I have to start training a new group of kids that vigorously tapping my arm and shoving their papers in my face are NOT appropriate ways to get my attention.

5. Between the itchy straw mat and the rough concrete floor…and the fact that I don’t have a teacher’s chair…my knees are going to have a rough year!

Five of our favorite things

1. Centers


2. Magnetic games


3. Play-doh


4. Whole Brain Learning

For all you Whole Brain teachers out there, yes, it is possible to do WBT in a non-traditional classroom.  Class-yes, hands and eyes, mirror, scoreboard game (give me an oh yeah!), the five rules…we do it all!



5. New friends


Five photos to make your heart melt

1. Kids Falling in love with books.



2. Johannah’s back-to-school smile


3 Ederly (middle)’s Yeah, I’m in kindergarten.  That’s what’s up face.


4. The attempted thumbs-up picture


5. Kids just being kids

Saturday, September 5, 2015

Kingdom-Worthy Classroom

Apparently, mourning over my classroom is going to be an annual part of my new-school-year preparations in Haiti.

Yesterday was the first chance I had to get into my classroom to start cleaning, organizing, and decorating.  As I hung posters, calendars, and maps, I felt good about each addition to my classroom…until I stepped back to look at the room as a whole.  When I did so, there was only one word to describe it.  Pathetic.  The brown walls were ugly and stained, there were two-by-fours running across the walls in the most awkward and inconvenient places, the posters kept falling because sticky tack and tape aren’t great on plywood, and there wasn’t much I could do to change any of that.



Last night, as I perused Pinterest trying to get ideas on what to do with those depressing walls, I longed for a bulletin board…or butcher paper…was a little paint too much to ask??  Each picture on Pinterest made my classroom seem more and more inadequate.  I looked jealously at adorable reading nooks with fancy carpets, shelves upon shelves of books, and comfy-looking beanbag chairs.  And here I was, hoping to get a single straw mat so that we could have “carpet” time without getting the kids’ uniforms filthy on the dusty floor (which apparently is gray, not brown.  Who knew?)

I spent a restless night dreaming of beautiful bulletin boards and painted walls and classrooms lit with more than two half-open windows.

Defeatedly, I thought to myself my classroom will never be Pinterest-worthy.  And that’s when I heard a voice in my ear whisper but it is Kingdom-worthy.

Kingdom-worthy?  What did that mean?


That’s when I started to learn: kingdom-worthy means love.  It means joy.  Intimacy.  Safety.  Compassion.  Relationships.  Hope.  It means that I can hang up a sign that says There are no orphans of God and know that within those ugly, stained, awkwardly-separated plywood walls, that statement is true.  There are no orphans of God.


Kingdom-worthy means that decorating with bulletin boards and fancy signs doesn’t matter.  What matters is decorating with Melissa as we turn up the music so that we can sing and dance while we work.  Decorating while Schnaidher reads in the corner, excited about new books.  Decorating with Anderson, who is hammering nails into those awkwardly-placed two-by-fours so that I can keep my calendar pieces next to the calendar instead of across the room.  Laughing hysterically when the banging of the hammer makes the window slam shut and scare the bageezes out of me.




Kingdom-worthy means that getting those straw mats is exciting…not so that we can have a beautiful “carpet” area, but so that we can meet together as a class to share in learning and fun.


Kingdom-worthy means having lesson plans in both English and Creole on my “teacher desk” so that I can collaborate with Madame J, sharing my expertise with her and learning from a veteran teacher.


Kingdom-worthy means that my classroom doesn’t glorify me.  It glorifies God.