Another busy week is over, they go by so fast! I can't believe we are already over half way through the first quarter. The week started wonderfully, with my birthday! I was not really excited to have my birthday on a Monday initially. I figured it would just kind of disappear into a long school day. This misconception went away before school even started. As soon as students began arriving I constantly heard "Happy Birthday Ms. Rychelle!" and one of my freshmen ran up to me and gave me an outer island head lei. Mondays always start with flag raising so k-12 grade line up in front of the flag poles. The entire school sang happy birthday to me and then the kids started singing "How old are you now.." nice try! They still don't get to know that little fact. Some of them were guessing 23 or 24... yes! I have fooled some of them! I received a few more head leis so I switched them out throughout the day. Every class I went to I was immediately met by birthday greetings and new renditions of the happy birthday song, including a rap from one of my seniors. As school ended I was handed a pile of birthday cards from the 2nd grade. They were so cute! They said "Happy Birthday Teacher Rychelle" and had all sorts of interesting art. Monday evening we went out to eat to celebrate. We went to the Manta Ray Bay restaurant. It is in a ship floating in the water, the restaurant is actually outside at the top. It was so nice to take a break from cooking and try out something new. My 20th birthday will not be forgotten. :)
The days of the week all seem to blend together. I brought out the schools long lost collection of graphing calculators and spent a day teaching the seniors how to use them. I had them race to make a smiley face. I worked on graphs and number lines with the sophomores and freshmen outside with side walk chalk. It worked really well! It is a bit of a struggle to keep all of them focused outside but they were all a lot more involved then in the classroom. I had them draw a giant graph on the basketball quart, and they were all begging for me to call on them to stand at a point. I tutored middle school math during my old PE time, it was fun to work one on one. On Thursday I convinced my seniors for a short while I could speak Yapese! It was hilarious, one of my students said something and I thought I heard it in English so I responded, correctly! I guess it must have been the intonation she said it in or something, I had no idea she had said it in Yapese. They all had the most shocked and confused looks on their faces, so funny. Later that day they came running up to me excited. I decorated the entire senior room black and yellow, it didn't take them long to figure out my favorite color. They said "Ms! Guess what colors we chose for our graduation gowns! Black and yellow!" :). Later that day we went to town and our van decided to act up. It just wouldn't start after our second stop in town. So all of us were out pushing it trying to get it going again, a funny sight I'm sure. Whenever something like that happens their are always a lot of students who know about it the next day. We kind of stand out, and everyone knows we are the teachers. News just travels fast in a small island I guess! They finally got it started and said we couldn't shut it off or we might not be able to get back. So, they had to fill it up with gas while it was running! It was pretty scary, I've always heard that is a terrible idea, so we stood as far away as we could!
Another crazy week draws to a close. It dumped rain all day today, which always makes for an interesting school day. My desk was completely soaked and everything on it. My students helped me move it to the other side of the room. They practiced their skit for chapel Monday. They are doing their own version of David and Goliath, quite entertaining! They taught me a new song on the guitar and I made peanut butter cookies for them. The cookies turned out to be a big hit! All 40 of them disappeared in less then 5 minutes! Sometimes throughout the day it just seems like chaos, but it always seems to come together. This week I understand the saying, "A teachers work is never done". It seems like no matter how much I do, their is more that needs to be done. More I want to teach them, more to plan, more to grade. It feels like their is always too much to cram in to such a small amount of time. At the end of the day I just have to step back and take a breath and look at my day. I can see the places God carried me through and the things that I need to work on. I see all the work I have to do and things I want to teach my students. Most importantly I see the moments that make everything else fade away. The times my students thank God for sending their teachers in prayer and ask for our safety; the things they say and do that make teaching the best way I could imagine spending my time. I don't think I'll ever really "finish" my work this year. I will probably always feel like their is more to do, but that is okay. I pray that God will help all of us as we influence and educate our students. These kids deserve the best, and more then anything I want to help them. I want to show them Christ's love and help them learn all they need to succeed at whatever it is they dream of doing.
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