First day of school!

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August 5th 2011

Published: August 5th 2011

We survived the first week of school! To sum it up, it's amazing! 😊 Here's a rundown of the last few days:

Wednesday was the open house and classroom prep day. I am the 10th grade homeroom teacher, so most of my 10th graders stopped by to get their schedules and their lockers. They were all super polite, calling me ma'am and doing a slight bow when they addressed me. That's taking a little bit to get used to. They all came without parents, which I thought was interesting. Most of the students are Korean and only a few live on campus here. Most live in Korean academies in Baguio that are run by Koreans (most of the time parents of one of the students), but a few do live with their parents here in town. So I thought that was interesting that most of the students came without parents or guardians to the open house. So in addition to meeting with most of the 10th graders, I had the rest of the day to lesson plan. One thing I'm realizing is that the technology here is not very good. And it's apparently way better here at Brent than any other place in the Philippines. For example, our internet is kinda spotting and at most is about 3mbps, and most of the time it is 5-15 people using the internet at the same time. And the copier doesn't do staples (I know it doesn't seem like a big deal, but it is when you're used to having one). And this is what really gets me... So they gave us brand new Mac Book Pros when we got here (awesome!) but, the grading program that they use as well as the different CD rom IB question banks, don't work on Macs. So, they have to install something on our macs that make it run windows, just so we can open our gradebook. And it takes about 5 min just to re-open the mac in windows mode. So, needless to say, that's a real pain. But on the bright side, we don't have to have our grade book totally up to date at all times (last year, I had to enter assignments in within 24 hours because it was online for parents and students to access). So at least I can wait til I have a lot to put in the book and then update it. I just find it really funny that some things are way up to date with technology (we have to clock in with a fingerprint scanner every day) and some not at all.

Classes started yesterday, Thursday, but since it's on an every other day schedule, I only saw two of my classes. My first class was my 8th grade class. There were 23 students, which is a very big class for here. All we did was go over the syllabus and some introduction games. It went pretty well. Then I had my 11th grade IB math higher level class. There were 2 students (there's supposed to be 3, but one is still in Korea and the other students weren't sure if/when he was coming back). So we did a little introduction and then we just did some review from what they learned last year so that I'm sure they're ready to start the intense IB curriculum.

Today, I had my other three classes. I started with my 9th grade enriched class. There are 6 students in that class. We did some introduction stuff and then moved on to a review worksheet that I made. There were about 50 questions on the worksheet and I was only intending for them to finish about half and then I was going to assign the other half for homework... So I handed it out and said they had the rest of the hour (like 30 min) to work on it. I told them they could work in pairs or groups of three, if they wanted to. As soon as I handed it out, they all started working individually and very quietly. They didn't talk at all! And then after about 20 min, I saw that most of them had finished, so I decided we would correct about half of it. So we did. And they all got most of them right. One interesting thing though... I was just reading the answers outloud and they were correcting their own, and I noticed that all of them were putting red slashes through each question. And I thought, "oh wow, they work quickly, but apparently they get them all wrong..." then I realized that they were putting a red slash through the ones they got right. Hence the reason why they were putting a slash through each question. Apparently, it's a Korean thing (all of them are Korean). So that class was amazing. I'm really excited because that's my geometry class, and there's a ton of fun, hands on activities for geometry that I'm sure I'll be able to do because they work so well.

Then I had my 10th grade enriched class. There's 10 of them and I have them all for homeroom, since I have all of grade 10 in my homeroom. This is a little wilder bunch. They were super chatty and a little rude at the beginning when we were doing some get to know you activities, but then once I handed out a review worksheet, they were quiet. They weren't quite at quiet as my 9th graders, but they were still really good.

Then I had my grade 12 IB higher level class. Again, there were 2 students, one girl and one boy (there will be three but one is in Korea, but he will definitely be back on Monday...On a side note, that student placed 13th in a national math competition. Apparently he's a complete genius.) After a few quick introductions, we started right into the curriculum. With IB math, it's a 2 year course, so they learned about half of the course last year, so we're starting mid-book this year. So we jumped straight into the calculus part of the class. It went really well. I'm a little nervous about the 2 IB classes just because they're so in depth and really tough, but I think it will be really good for me. I was really intimidated at first because I learned that the teacher that I replaced had her doctorate in math, but the students said that she wasn't a very good teacher because she was too smart to teach the material. They said that she didn't explain anything and didn't answer questions when they had them. So I know that won't be a problem for me. I just hope that I can figure out all the material 😊

After school today we had a meeting about the 8th grade class because it's so big (23 students) and there are 6 on the wait list that they really want to try and admit (they cap each class at 25, normally). So they decided that they will have two sections of grade 8. So that means that my grade 8 class will be small too, and the enriched class. So, I think I'll have 11 kids in that class.

So far, I absolutely love it here 😊 I love that my classes are small and the students are super respectful. Such a change from last year. Every time I walk past students on campus (even if they aren't mine) they say, "hello ma'am." Also, Brandon's told his 6th grade class (he has most of them, so it's about 15 kids) to say hi to me whenever they see me. So, today I was walking down to the middle school during snack break (yea, there's a 25 min break in the middle of the day for snacks) to say hi to Brandon and most of his class was sitting outside and they all yelled, "Good morning Mrs. Nichols!" It was so cute 😊

Here's Brandon to write about how his first couple days were:

Things couldn’t have gone better for me during the first few days at Brent Baguio. Despite some difficulty getting everyone’s name down, partially due to some very non-English names, every class progressed seamlessly. It is definitely nice, and a change from last year, to have students walk in and say “good morning sir” before class begins. While all my classes seem to be comprised of great students, I felt an instant connect with my 6th grade class of 16 students. Who knows, maybe I’m cut out to be an elementary teacher.

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