AuburnChick's Adventures

It’s Friday afternoon, and I just finished my fifth week of teaching.

Before I tell you about it, I feel the need to tell you that I’ve been holding out on you a bit.

See, my students are all Muslim.  At my school, students are taught the core subjects as well as Arabic and Islamic education.

As you probably already know, I was hired to teach English.

The principal hired me with the full knowledge that I am a Christian.  This was not important to him.

What mattered was that I was qualified for the job at hand.

You might wonder why I haven’t mentioned this before.  Honestly, it wasn’t because I was embarrassed.

I’m not.

I just never wanted this fact to be the main focus of my teaching posts.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve discovered that it is really difficult to share the meaty stuff I’m doing without you having this knowledge.

Now, I feel more open to share additional conversations that crop up during what would normally be “routine” assignments.

Gosh, but I think I’m starting to ramble.  There’s just so much on my heart right now.

See, I am AuburnChick…small-town girl who, as a senior in high school, accepted Jesus as my Savior and was baptized in my tiny Baptist church.  Despite gradually moving “up” in the world…moving to bigger towns over the years before finally returning to my roots…I have remained somewhat sheltered.

Who would have thought that I would be teaching at a Muslim school?

It just goes to show you that God works in mysterious ways.

So…back to Week 5.

This was an interesting week.  It was a bit of a roller coaster.  I started off at an fairly even keel.  Because my 9th graders did so poorly on last week’s vocabulary test, I decided I better do some kind of review with them.

A neighbor/friend/teacher told me about Vocabulary Bingo, and my interest was piqued.  I made up bingo cards with each space containing a word (for a total of 20 words).  Because the cards were 5 squares by 5 squares, I needed five more things to fill in.  I used five teachers’ names.

Yeah.  I’m smart like that.

That’s why they pay me the not-so-big-bucks.

I put the definitions on separate slips of paper and cut them out.  These would be the Bingo “balls.”  I put them in my ceramic flower pot and mixed them up.

Before I left the house, I collected all of the safety pins in my house.  These would be serving as Bingo markers.

See…smart I am, eh?

You guys…I had no idea how my seniors would react to this game, but they surprised me by really getting into it!

I made it a lot of fun.  I told them that cheating by looking on a neighbor’s card (all of the cards were different) was perfectly okay.  I decided that if they cheated, they would still be learning the words.  I also told them I would give them one point for every Bingo game they won.  The total number of points would be added to their vocabulary test scores.  Oh, but before they could be named Bingo winners, they had to read their words back to me and give me each word’s part of speech.

Let me tell you…this game was a hit!  Every class enjoyed it!

The reward payed off the next day when, after my 9th grade took the test, students told me how much the game had helped them.  Some students doubled their grades from the week before!

Woo Hoo!

Meanwhile, my juniors and seniors have been studying the Declaration of Independence.  We have picked the document apart, looking at the literary elements and vocabulary.

I assigned my students the task of giving the United States a report card and grading it on how well it has upheld the five ideals of the Declaration (equality, life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, and government of the people).

The kids asked if they could answer honestly.

I said yes, as long as they could back up their grade with sound reasoning.

This assignment is actually a prewriting exercise to assist them with the essays they will be writing…essays in which they take a stand on the overall grade they assigned on the report cards.  They will be expounding on two of the ideals above.

I am very excited to read these kids’ answers.  They are young, but because they are Muslim, they have experienced things I never have nor probably will.

They offer a fresh perspective on my sheltered view of the world.

My 6th graders read a story about heroes, and I also taught them a lesson on text mapping.  Text mapping is learning to read informational texts by noticing titles, subtitles, key words, maps, and illustrations.  I copied the next chapter of their history books and had them highlight each element.  We talked about making predictions and other stuff.

I have to say that at the beginning of the term, I was nervous about going from high school to 6th graders, but I have adjusted, and I’ve discovered a fresh innocence and a sincere desire to please.

They whined when I gave them a list of 20 spelling words, but they grew more excited during their pretest on Wednesday.  Especially the part when they got to grade each others’ papers.  LOL

Today, they took their test, and almost all of them did well.

Woo Hoo!

Meanwhile, my 9th graders studied the Gift of the Magi (great story, by the way), and my 10th graders read The Open Window (another cute story).

Today, I started a new story with my 10th graders – The Masque of the Red Death.

Oh my gosh.  This story has so much depth!  I have enough lesson plans for two weeks!  They’ll be sick of the story by the end, but they will know a lot about allegories, symbolism, and irony.

Good stuff, folks.

The kids think they are the only ones being challenged.

They’re not.

My brain stays fried most of the time, but I am learning so much.

I am gaining confidence, thanks to the listening ear of my friend, Barb.

I am learning how to handle situations in which students might need a gentler hand.

I am learning that the world is a much bigger place than I ever imagined, and my perspective is one of many.

I am learning that God doesn’t always place you where you expect (in fact, I think He relishes the thrill of surprising us).  He is using me right where I am.  It doesn’t matter that the culture or religious affiliation is different.

I am a child of God.

I am His servant.

God is growing and stretching me in the same way that I am growing and stretching my students.

Week 5 – very good indeed!

Filed under: Teaching | Tagged: teaching |