I am cold....in Mexico...haha.

Guess what? I am in fact cold here in Mexico. Sometimes, I think I'm colder at night and in the morning than I would be in the Upl.S. This is because, houses and buildings in general here do not have any heating, since they don't really need it! Well, the low here will reach 40 or 50 degrees at night. That means that it will in fact reach about 50 or 60 degrees inside every single building. Varmond has many walls made completely of glass or plexi-glass, so the cold comes right through. Still, I'm quite grateful to be avoiding the weather in which your wet hair turns to icicles and the inside of your nose freezes. I told people here that this is how cold WI is right now, and they couldn't imagine it. Haha!

Even though this week was a short one for us, it still felt quite long. Tuesday through Thursday was spent mostly in finishing workbook pages, preparing for the open class, and having the open class. The open classes with the parents went well on Thursday. The second one was better than the first, since we learned how to organize the games better from the first class. My role in the open class was the math problems in English. I held up a problem related to fractions, and the students had to run to the tables to find a card with the answers. Sometimes, we had parents participate and answer the problems, which made it more fun. The open class gave me a chance to meet some of the parents, and talk to the Principal and Academic Dean of the school a bit. All of them were very friendly! The Principal said he'd love to have more student teachers come from SNC! :) (He even said that 5 or 10 student teachers at a time would be great! I'm not sure if we could pull that off, but for any of you considering student teaching abroad, know that you're more than welcomed in Morelia, Mexico!!) Honestly, a student teacher that comes here wouldn't even have to know Spanish, since it's a bilingual school with classes in just English.

I did get a little more used to the grading system here. I think it's a challenging one, since there seems to be a quota for the number of quizzes and homework assignments that are entered into the gradebook each month. This week, I felt like we had a lot of quizzes just for the sake of having more grades to consider in the average. This made me wonder how authentic all of the assessments were. I think I will have to be careful in my teaching to make sure that I plan out quizzes in a way that they are quality assessments and not bunched up at the end of the month.

I'm still grappling with the fact that the worksheet curriculum doesn't allow room for the learning process. Because all of the students must do the exact same workbook pages at the exact same rates, there is very, very minimal room for differentiation. However, I've noticed a huge range of abilities in both classes. Somehow, I'm going to need to be creative with those worksheets and figure out how to integrate more differentiation so that I can meet all of the students' needs. I noticed from the gradebook, that some have consistently low or failing grades and averages. These grades are marked in red pen, and as I flipped through all the grades from the year, each page seemed to have at least a fourth of the page in red!! I think teaching in a way such that all students can reach proficiency will be likely my biggest challenge student teaching here.

This weekend, I'll be exploring Morelia a bit more. I met a girl here, Sonia, from Oregon, and I think we'll be wandering around the city together to see more of it.

P.S.  On the computer at CCL, I wasn't able to see the video on my blog.  Now, on my Mac, I can see my video.  Hmm....so, if some of you aren't able to see my video from the last blog, please let me know (in a comment), and I'll try to figure out what's up.  Thanks!