First Day of School! I survived and my 2nd grade students survived! I was excited and nervous this morning. We do not have our PACEs yet, so trying to come up with lessons and activities for the students is challenging. We made it through today reviewing the alphabet and numbers, speaking numbers in English, speaking and pronouncing the English alphabet and writing the letters and numbers. These children can speak English, but some not much and some very well, so it is a challenge. But when they are in English class they are supposed to speak English. I have 17 students, although I only had 15 in my class today. But that was plenty! Of course I have a couple of boys who are going to be trouble...and a couple kids who are going to be a challenge as they are obviously below the learning curve and I have some who are way beyond the average 2nd grader. My hands will be full...but gladly so!

It was also good to see many of the older students who I worked with last year. I got to hear about their vacation adventures during the last two months of being out of school. Today we only had a half-day of school, but the rest of the days, I will be in the Learning Center with the 3rd through high school age kids in the afternoons.

I had a funny thing happen today in class. We had practiced counting, and some of the kids were struggling with the numbers...I didn't know if it was just English they were struggling with or if they would also have trouble with writing and recognizing the numbers. So after speaking the numbers, I asked all the children to write the numbers. I had several of them coming to me with their paper showing me they had written their name. I said to one little girl "Write your numbers to ten"...she wrote Sofia Sofia Sofia Sofia Sofia Sofia Sofia Sofia Sofia Sofia...her name 10 times! With that it finally clicked with me they were not writing numbers they were writing their name....so I stopped them all and we talked about the word number...what is a number.....finally the lights all flashed on in their little eyes and they got what I asking from them. It was a learning experience for me!

I was running out of things to do today so I was happy when it was 12:00 and time to end the day. So I worked this afternoon on some activities for tomorrow that will hopefully fill the day with fun! Please keep me in your prayers as well as the children and teachers, and Lance and Annette who have a large responsibility with the school and teachers!