It’s been a whirlwind of a week! After traveling Sunday and Monday, I started teaching at Good Shepherd Bilingual School on Tuesday morning. My students had gym class first thing in the morning, so after saying good morning, our class lined up and walked around the school to a field for relay races, jump rope, and soccer. As we walked down the dirt road toward the field, two little girls ran up and took my hands as we walked. In that moment, after two days of travel and countless things that I had never seen or experienced before, something clicked and felt right. As I look forward to the next few months, I know it’s not going to be easy but somehow this is where I’m supposed to be right now.
I’m teaching and living in Camasca, a very cute town on the frontera, or border with El Salvador. Here, you’ll walk down cobblestone streets, taking in colorful terra cotta buildings with metal grilles over the windows and bright hibiscus and rhododendron blooming here and there. Good Shepherd Bilingual School is very cute, with classrooms for Pre-K through fourth grade that forms a courtyard. Just outside of the gates is a playground. I’ll be in charge of teaching second grade English and spend my mornings as the teaching assistant. Lessons focus on English, Spanish, and Math. I’ve helped with English lessons, especially with pronunciation and coaxing kids into keeping up with the lesson in their notebooks.
There are 25 students in my class, all 7-8 years old. There’s a range of heights and weights of the children: a handful of children are well-fed and bright-eyed, while another handful of kids are very small, with unhealthy teeth, clearly under or malnourished. The rest of the class falls somewhere in between. The school serves leche, or milk, around 9:30 or 10 in the morning, as well as lunch around noon, so children can count on that nourishment.
My first week here has been a humbling experience but I’m ready to keep teaching and learning. I hope you’ll follow along on my blog https://rebeccascompassrose.wordpress.com/. Thanks for reading!
