Week of Love and Friendship...and disciplining students.

Hello blog followers. I hope you are having wonderful Valentine's Day whether you are celebrating love between couples, family or friends. Down here in Honduras they call this day Dia del Amor y la Amistad (Day of Love and Friendship).

So what else is going down here?



Well on Thursday, my roommate Liz and I celebrated our friendship with one of the 7th grade Honduran teachers, Maritza, by having her over to one of our "spanish speaking only" dinners. Maritza teaches 7th grade also: Social Studies and Civic Education. She is all smiles and great to talk to...

and not as tall as I am.

The big news on Tuesday at school was Henry's new found turtle. No, there was much more going on than just that.

He's a lot smaller than the 900 pound sea turtles of Costa Rica.

As for academics, this week was a mathematically challenging since my students had to learn to how to convert from one metric unit of volume to another. Here is Hector, Concepcion and Jose Manuel taking a hands-on approach to learning.

I think they liked this change of learning from the normal Mr. Karbousky lectures.

I just had to make sure the blocks remained tools of learning rather than ammunition for a classwide block fight.

7th grade and I did get through the academically challenging week, although their behavior pushed me and other teachers to new levels of frustration. Our principal Annie and myself had to have "a talk" with them after they were all kept in for detention at lunch on Thursday. But luckily Friday arrived right on time, and after they finished their math test we hung out outside. Here are some of them enjoying some music.

Jose Manuel is a rocker at heart.

and maybe Jonathan too...

but no one tops Elmer.

The girls love it when I take out my camera. Here is Dunia and Arleth.

Ivonne.

But the girls got really jazzed when we discovered the camera's "paint" function.

They couldn't get enough of it.

Happy Valentine's Day!