New Learning in the New Year

The students came back from break with tales of how much chicken they had eaten for New Years and excited to see the wonderful selection of new books that visiting friends had brought us. I have personally enjoyed the experience of looking over old friends like Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (Il pleut des hamburgers) and Clifford (renamed Bertrand) translated into French. Each new group of books also highlights how surprisingly difficult it is to come up with a selection of books that our students can relate to. For example, they are hugely amused by the concept of food falling from the sky, but don't recognize about three quarters of the food that falls in Il pleut des hamburgers. I wholeheartedly believe in the power of books to transport us and give us windows to worlds we don't see everyday, but it is also important for our kids to see themselves and their experiences in books. If anyone has any suggestions of books that might help diversify our collection, please let me know.

This week was also a particularly good one for learning at the library. Robert took over teaching the elementary schoolers and he did a fantastic job. Each lesson we do underlines how much work there is to be done (only 1 of our 4^th graders wrote a complete sentence when asked this week), but we also see small signs of progress that encourage us to keep going. In the realm of small victories, things went very well with the 7^th and 8^th graders I saw this week, usually some of the more difficult groups. In one of the 7^th grade groups there are 3 female students who never do anything that is asked of them. I think I have determined this is because they also don't understand French nearly as well of their classmates. Yesterday one completed her entire assignment (write 4 sentences in English, 1 with each of the prepositions we are studying) and corrected her own errors and one got 2 sentences done. I hope that they are slowly getting the picture that they can do this. I think that after 7 years of being called imbecile by your teachers does not provide a lot of incentive to keep trying.

Our next shipment of books remains tied up in customs, but as we continue to navigate the bureaucratic maze to retrieve them, I'm excited about what's happening here everyday.