CEDEI School!!

I thought that I would take the time to share how student teaching has been going throughout this week!  It did not take me long to figure out that the education system in the United States and here in Cuenca, Ecuador are quite different.  After three full days of observing different classrooms, during our first week, I took note of how much freedom the students have.  There is much less structure within the classrooms at CEDEI School.  As a result I have noticed how many of the students tend to be more independent. 

Each grade at CEDEI School has one classroom and the students range from the early childhood age all the way up to seventh grade.  This is a school that includes children with special education.  The way our schedule works while student teaching at this school is a bit different from our all day, everyday student teaching in the United States.  Last week we took the time to learn about the school and rotated as we observed each of the classrooms.  We were all assigned a teaching schedule for weeks two through four.  Then for the following weeks, five through eight, we have a completely new schedule.  While student teaching here we are not busy every hour of the day.  During the second week we are required to teach two lessons, the third week three lessons, etc.  We do tend to have breaks throughout each day, but for me I have a few days that are super packed and others that are more lax.  Also, even though this week I only had to teach two lessons I still had other activities/lessons that I had to attend to.

~The door to one of the younger aged classrooms~

~Inside the classroom~

~Some of our youngest kiddos~

~My little buddy...what a cutie~

Although our schedules vary from day to day and change halfway through our time that we spend at CEDEI School, there are a few various things that stay the same.  Each student teacher has been assigned one to three students to tutor.  I am tutoring two sixth grade students twice a week.  They are both great kiddos, but just need a little extra one-on-one attention in order to complete their work.  Each of us was also assigned to a student with special needs.  We have the opportunity to tutor this specific child once a week.  The child that I am working with has autism, but is high functioning.  He was absent this week when I was supposed to tutor him, but we will see how it goes next week.  I’m super excited to build a positive teacher to student relationship with him! 

~The sixth grade classroom where I taught my language lesson~

            

Both of these pictures are of the older students.  I never thought that I would enjoy teaching the upper grades!!          

All of the classrooms have a national teacher.  When it comes to speaking English, each of their abilities varies.  There are also English speaking international teachers.  These are the teachers that we are collaborating with for our lessons.  The international teachers teach specific lessons and they are taught in English.  When either the national or international teacher is teaching the other is usually working on planning for the following day or week.

This week I taught two language lessons.  I taught one lesson to the sixth graders and one lesson to the first graders.  Before teaching I was definitely more nervous to teach the sixth graders because I’m not used to working with the older students.  After I had finished teaching the lessons I felt the complete opposite.  I absolutely love the sixth grade class!  These students are older so they have a much easier time speaking in English than the younger ones do.  Both of the lessons went very well, but I was just surprised that I enjoyed working with the sixth graders!   

 There are two other projects that we have to complete in addition to teaching lessons.  All of the student teachers were assigned a grade and theme for a project.  I was assigned to fourth grade and the project has to be related to gardening.  As a cohort we also have to do a beautification project for the school.  This is something that we had to come up with on our own.  After taking the time to brainstorm and look at the needs of the school we are thinking that we are going to redo their school library.  We would love to do paintings on the walls to make it look more lively along with adding bean bag chairs and some fun things like that.  The cohort that is a year behind us at UW-Whitewater had a bake sale to raise money for us.  The money that they raised will be used to buy supplies for the beautification project!  Towards the end of my trip, I will be sure to post pictures of before and after the beautification project!

~Stairs leading up to some of the classrooms~

Are you wondering about the visual appearance of CEDEI School?!  Everything at CEDEI School is pretty much outside except for the classrooms.  A normal hallway in between classrooms does not exist here.  The students do have art, music, and dance class.  Dance is an important part of the culture here and a lot of the students can dance a lot better than any of us teachers!  The students LOVE to play soccer during lunch time!  I’ve been tempted to go and play with them…haha I would probably make a fool out of myself!  Anyways, here are a few pictures to give you a glimpse of what the school looks like. 

~On each side of the stairs there are cement slides...sooo FAST~

~At the top of the stairs, where classrooms begin~

~More classrooms~

~View from the top of the stairs~

~Some of the students playing soccer during lunch recess~

~A few of the fourth grade boys during music class~

One last thing that I forgot to mention was how throughout the week we all brought our suitcases to the school.  All of us had a second luggage bag that was checked that had been filled with all sorts of school supplies.  Here are some pictures of everything that we brought!  The school supplies and resources are very limited for the teachers here.  You should have seen the teacher’s faces glow when they walked into the art room where we had unloaded all of the supplies! 

~All of our school supply donations~

~Excited International Teachers~

Every week will become busier with teaching lessons.  Right now I am focusing on memorizing all of the student’s names and let me tell ya…it’s not easy!  On a daily basis I get quizzed and I will have students come up to me saying “Tia Aimee, what is my name?.”  Sooner or later I will remember them all!  By the way, all of the students call the teachers "tia" which means aunt in Spanish.  It’s unbelievable how much and the various ways that two people from different cultures can communicate.  As much as I miss everyone back home, I can already tell that it’s going to be tough for me to leave when the time comes.  

Thanks for taking the time to read about CEDEI School.  I hope you learned something new about CEDEI School and the experience that I’ve been having so far!

Xoxo,

Aimee