April 16 - April 20

This was my second full week in the schools, and I love it.  I have finally gotten to meet the rest of my students because they were gone on a field trip the first week I was there.  I am working with a freshman class who are in prep classes because they didnt do well on their entrance exams.  I am also working with 3 senior classes who I have absolutely fallen in love with.  These kids are awesome! I am just helping with the senior classes because my teacher is pressed for time and she is really worried that she is not going to be able to finish the curriculum.  So I walk around and help students one on one and really get to know them.  I have been teaching in the freshmen class though! Since they are a prep class they are going at a much slower pace than the other freshman, and we are covering one topic in a 45 minute class that would take about 10-15 minutes in the other classes.  Something else that is really interesting here is that they separate the classes by grade, not by topic.  So in freshman math class you learn that basics of algebra, geometry, statistics, etc, and then in your sophomore year you learn the next level of the same topics.  My teacher, Mrs. Iris was joking that her students would be so bored if there was a whole class dedicated to just algebra!  The teachers complain that the students have no motivation to learn and they just dont care like they used to, but from my experience I feel like these students are way more enthusiastic than the students back home.  But one thing that I have learned is that teenagers are the exact same no matter what country you are in.