11/18/08

We had today off because it is a national holiday called, "Combat de Vertieres". I spent half of the day in my classroom preparing for the remainder of the week working on problem sets in Advanced Math, preparing for a Geometry review, and worked on my lesson plans for a few classes. It was nice to have a break early on in the week to get ahead with the planning.

When I was sitting in my classroom, Ern, one of my seniors which I have for geometry, came in. He was at the school because he had a meeting with some of the other students. I figured he was just walking over to say hi, and when he got to my desk, he did just that. However, just after he said hi, he began to apologize for trying to sneak a snack in the class. I had caught him and told him to either throw the drink away or take it out into the hallway and finish it. Normally, I wouldn't give a person an option, but since food is in limited supply here I would hate to ever tell someone to throw away any type of food even if it isn't appropriate to have in class. He did end up tossing the drink and it really wasn't that big of a deal, but I do have a lot of respect for him to stop by and apologize over something that wasn't a big problem. He also did it with such sincerity.

We then started talking about graduation and what he wants to do. He mentioned that he wants to go to college to study anthropology. He said that he enjoys learning about other cultures and thinks it is important to know about other people's cultures before you can be effective at teaching them. I thought this was very interesting to hear a high school student say this when I am not sure if I knew what anthropology was in high school.

Ern also mentioned that he would like to have a designated time where students could hang out with teachers and ask questions that they don't normally get to talk about in class. He was mentioning how foreign students who study in the states are expected to know certain assumed information which he said a lot of people don't always know about. He said that he hears about the economy in the US and about Wall Street and so on, but doesn't know much about it and some of the things he is interested in learning about aren't the types of questions you always have time for in class or the question doesn't match the subject so he cannot always fit the question in. I thought it was a great idea, especially because it will give the teachers another way to reach the students in a way they don't always get to.