Classes and more classes

September 27, 2008
By Katie

After the week of many holidays, I was able to return to the school Luz y Verdad for a full week of classes. It was very nice to see better how the school runs and where I will fit in there.

The school serves K-6 with kindergarten, first grade, second grade, third/fourth grades, and fifth/sixth grades. There is one English teacher named Marcos who I work with. English is the only special and all students have it everyday for 20-40 minutes.

About halfway through this week, I took over the third/fourth grade and Marcos and I split the fifth/sixth grade into two small groups. I teach the fifth grade in that class. There is a textbook that the teacher uses, but it has limited use since only a few kids still have their photocopied versions of the text and there is no teacher’s edition which has many of the instructions for the activities. I’d like to see what other supplementary material we can come up with to boost the program a little.

School is done at noon every day and I ride the school bus home with the kids. I had been praying about what to do with the rest of my time. The housework and making all our food from scratch has been keeping me busy, but if you know me, I like to keep things moving faster than that! But, no worries, a situation has presented itself.

I had been getting to know my little neighbor girl, six-year-old Briana. Her friends liked to shout “Katie!” to which I would respond “Hola!” repeatedly a dozen times per day. Doris told me that Briana can’t read and that she may have to repeat first grade. I talked with Briana’s mom too and she told me that the entire first grade class can’t read (except for one person). Katie’s After-school Program was instantly born. Just like that, I’ve got about 12 kids (with more every day) coming over to my front porch in the afternoons for classes from 2:00-4:00 five days per week. The students take this very seriously and everyone who walks by starts cracking up. I think it must be quite a sight! I’m thankful for the answered prayer of an opportunity to do what I do best and am praying now for the students that they can learn and see God in the classes.