Life: The Ultimate Safari: Two for the Price of One

I figured that since neither of my last two posts have been very “newsy,” I owe you a news-filled post. So, you’re getting two blogs for the price of one today! I just finished my second week of teaching. It’s hard to believe that I’ve only been doing school for two weeks. It feels like I’ve been teaching much longer than that! But the past two weeks have gone very well.

This week was a busy week in 6^th grade. We had a test nearly every day. Some of those tests definitely revealed weak areas in my teaching, but we’ll keep moving forward. I told the kids that if they were patient with me, I would be patient with them, and hopefully, we’ll all learn together. I spend the first part of the morning (8am to 11am) at the Barillas teaching their two 6^th graders, then I head over to the school house to help another family until 12:30pm. Right now, a few of the girls are most of their classes via videos. One of the moms is teaching her youngest a few classes, but I’m not planning on teaching until we begin literature next semester. Right now, I’m just helping the 11^th grader stay on task—I do her lesson plans, grade her assignments, and help out however I can. I’m also helping grade some of the 7^th grader’s assignments. 7^th grade is a rough transition from 6^th grade. Suddenly, so much is expected and it’s all so different from 6^th grade, but C is doing a great job.

This week I started filling up my schedule with my extra-curricular activities as well. I was able to teach all of my violin students this week. It’s hard to get back into the swing of lessons after summer break—I know because I was the same way as my students! But, so far, I’ve been very pleased with the efforts each student has put into practicing. I’m upping my expectations for each of them this year, and I’m excited to see how much they can improve with added practice time. God has graciously brought out two violin teachers in a row to Cameroon, but we don’t know who will come out next year to teach them. So, I’m trying to push them as far as I can while I’m here. Violin lesson 2 with the four-year old ended on a positive note as well. Unfortunately, her violin is too big for her. I brought out a ¼ violin instead of an 1/8^th. I figured she would be in the ¼ size for longer than she would be in the 1/8, so it was more important to me to bring out the larger violin. I’m trying to stall by teaching her bow techniques in order to let her grow into the violin a little more. She has, however, already asked me when we’re going to actually start playing the violin.