Pretending It's Autumn

It's that time of the year when I pretend it's fall time. There might be an alarming lack of orange leaves, boots, and pumpkin spice lattes here, but I can still decorate the library appropriately and plan lessons on pumpkins, fall leaves, and thankfulness.

When some very expensive, imported pumpkins showed up at the grocery store a couple of weeks back, I decided to snatch the biggest one up. I knew many of my students had probably never seen a real pumpkin, and I thought it would go well with some of the pumpkin books we were going to read.

My littlest students were so funny when they first saw it. "Is that a REAL pumpkin? A REAL one?!" They touched it and smelled it and wanted to pass it around. We learned about how pumpkins come from seeds and grow on vines. We had adjective competitions to fill in the blanks on our pumpkin song.

Now we are preparing for Thanksgiving. Because we are so thankful for all our books in the library, we made some turkeys to show off the books we are most thankful for.

Some books that I've read recently that I am thankful for:
The Pigeon Needs a Bath! by Mo Willems

The Blood of Olympus by Rick Riordan

The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey

If You Were a Book Title

I asked my 6th graders this question:

After some brainstorming, we hit the markers and started decorating our circles.

The 6th graders started telling me about people, events, books, locations, and other things that held significance in their lives. Harry Potter turned a nonreader into a reader. A student who recently came to Nicaragua is trying to grapple with moving from one part of the world to another. Music has, and always will be, the best part of another student's day.

Working in the library has given me more time and more opportunities to listen to my students and to hear their stories. Give them a little prodding, and they have a lot to say.

More Movin' and Shakin'

You know how there are some things you never get tired of talking about? Around here it is the infamous earthquake weeks of last April. Big and little earthquakes shook the nation's capital, students weren't allowed to come to class for three weeks, we launched online school, and some of us teachers went a little stir crazy. 

For as much as we talk about it, I really didn't think it would happen again. Ah, how wrong I was.

Monday night: I had just fallen asleep when I was rudely awakened by some violent shaking. Disoriented, I looked around, sat up, tried to figure my life out.

As soon as I remembered about these lovely things called earthquakes, I jumped out of bed and ran outside, barefoot, in the pouring rain. A 7.2 earthquake somewhere out in the ocean caused a lot of moving and shaking around the country. 

Fast forward to today. We haven't had classes all week and no one really understands why the government wont let us have school. Teachers have been sending home work online. We have started making ridiculous videos to send to our students. It's the infamous earthquake weeks all over again. 

We are hoping classes will resume Monday and we can continue on with our school year. 

How about some uplifting news? Construction on the new library has begun! Hopefully in a couple of months we will have a brand new space for reading and learning. 

Comedy Hour

Hands down the funniest part of my day is when I tutor a third grader after school. This girl is hilarious and full of laughter.

Don't worry, a lot of learning still happens during tutoring (aka Comedy Hour), but a lot of laughter goes along with it. We spend a good portion our time working on vocabulary and reading skills. We always make up actions to go with each new vocab word we are studying, and then we quiz each other to see who can remember the most words. The actions are usually over the top and crazy (and involve a lot of giggling), but they get the job done. 

Last week we were working on the world realize. The action was touching the side of our heads and shouting "ding!" like the light bulb was going off in our brains. Later when we were reading Scaredy Squirrel, my student came across that same vocab word. She immediately sat up, did the action, and then imagined Scaredy Squirrel doing the action, which led to many, many giggles. It is safe to say this vocabulary word has been learned. 

I think God has given this little girl a gift of joy and laughter that will touch many people. I am glad I get to share in it a couple of hours each week. 

Scavenger Hunt

I want all of my students to be readers. We all know readers need a good book to read. However, I have quickly learned that even in a small library, finding a book can be a daunting task for students. They have no idea why books are on certain shelves. In their eyes, call numbers on book spines are just a mysterious combination of numbers and letters. For some students, they don't even know what type of book they would like to read. They stare at the shelves, but don't pull out any books.

After many lessons on library organization, alphabetical order, the Dewey Decimal system, and call numbers, I set my students loose on a library scavenger hunt. In pairs, they hunted for specific books, authors, and Dewey Decimal numbers, putting all their newly acquired knowledge to the test. 

I loved watching students run their fingers across the rows of book spines as they searched for a particular call number, struggle spelling the words "Dewey Decimal", and mouth the ABC's to themselves as they raced to complete their scavenger hunt.

The older students are now much more familiar with how a library works. They can find a book if I supply an author's last name, they know how to read the different nonfiction signs, and they can put their own books back on the shelf. A little bit of digging and exploring has helped many students find new authors and book series that they enjoy.
Happy readers = happy librarian. 

Celebrating Independence

Nicaragua, the land of lakes and volcanoes 

Celebrating Independence Day is a big deal in schools around the country. At my school, students from preschool to 12^th grade wear traditional outfits, give presentations about geography and culture, memorize poems and songs, and present dances to all the parents.

This is the girl that I tutor twice a week after school. She didn't want to give me a toothy smile for this picture, but she is hilarious during tutoring time. She is always telling jokes and trying to make me laugh. 

Students can’t have all the fun, so like always, the teachers dress up and dance. Not only can we teach, but we can dance! Who knew we were so talented?

We are all hungry after the festivities and dancing, so we end our celebration with traditional Nica food. Today I want to share with you the joy that is the buñuelo. It's a delicious combo of yuca and cheese, deep fried with honey and cinnamon on top. YUM YUM YUM. I recommend you come to Nicaragua ASAP to try one out. 

After eating one too many buñuelos, some of the teachers hit the road for a little weekend adventure. 

Here we are exploring Somoto Canyon

Our adventure included hiking, floating, and boating through this beautiful canyon. 

 Happy Independence to my adopted country!

Flood

A couple of days ago I was reading a new book I got for the library about Hurricane Katrina. After I was finished, I spent a lot of time thinking about floods and how I would never like to be in one. 

Later that day I came home from school and sat down at my desk ready to get some work done. I needed to make a few phone calls, download a book to my kindle, and do some things for school. All required the internet.

Internet was out at my house, again. Off I went to the coffee shop a couple of kilometers down the road. 

As I was sipping my delicious mocha the power went out. I decided to stick around for a while to see if it came back on. I opened my kindle, the staff passed out some candles, and I enjoyed my book. When the electricity came back on I plowed through my school work. Up next: phone calls. I was talking to my friend when out of nowhere a huge storm blew in. The skies opened and the rain came pouring down. Only a few minutes passed when I heard a strange noise and looked up to see water rushing through the coffee shop. The floor was now covered with a mini river, a river that was flowing over my feet. 

The other customers and I did some scrambling until the staff herded us behind the cash register area - the only area that was safe from the rising water. During this time I was shouting on the phone, grabbing my things, and probably making it sound like the end of the world was coming. 

The water kept rising and rising around us. The electricity went out, and with it my phone call. I could barely see in front of my face, but I could hear the water. Of course my mind wandered to the Hurricane Katrina book I had been reading earlier that day. I was imagining the snakes floating at the top of the water and how I might really appreciate a canoe in the near future. 

My canoe thoughts were quickly replaced with electrocution when the lightning moved in and the loudest thunder I have ever heard in my life was booming overhead. The storm was on top of us. The other ladies in the coffee shop were shrieking and we were all a little jumpy every time the sky lit up. The lightning lasted a little too long for my liking. After it finally moved on, the rain kept coming down. Rain, rain, and more rain. 

I tried to call my roommate to tell her about the situation. I was out of cell phone minutes. I felt a little bit stranded. An hour passed. Little by little the staff ventured out into the water-filled room and swept the rain out. When it was safe enough for us to walk through, they said we were welcome to stay as long as we needed to, or we could book it to our cars and head home. It was still raining and the power was out, but I figured I should leave instead of staying. Who knew how long the storm would last? 

When I got to the front door, I realized my car was parked at the bottom of a steep hill that just so happened to be at the top of a drop off to a lagoon. Of course there was a fence separating my car from the drop off, but it made me nervous anyway. One of the staff members graciously offered to drive my car up for me. Another staff member held an umbrella over my head as we ran to my car. We all ended up completely drenched, but I felt like we had achieved a small success as I pulled out onto the street. 

That feeling stopped after about three seconds. No street lights + pouring rain = little visibility = panicky feeling. I turned on my hazard lights and drove three miles per hour like everyone around me. I was inching down the road, having no idea where the center line was, swerving to avoid oncoming traffic, when my gas light went on. Uh oh, I thought. The only option I had was to keep driving, so on I went. 

This is a good time to mention that the highway I live on has been going through some major construction. They have been digging ditches on the sides of the road as they resurface and do whatever it is they are doing. Without lights and with water rushing down the road, the ditches were invisible. I drove by two cars that had tipped over in the ditches and were stuck on their sides. 

At this point I was unsure what would happen first: my car getting carried away in the rushing water, my car running out of gas, my car tipping over in the ditch, or my car getting hit by another car. After much praying and death-gripping the steering wheel, I arrived home, drenched and with my heart beating a little too fast, without any of the aforementioned events happening. 

To top off this rainy week, I had flat tire #14 yesterday. 

Life here is an adventure.