The Journey Inward

Again, some random pieces of information from today…

If I die in South Africa, it won’t be from any of the horrible safety report reasons I read about before coming. It will be trying to escape my house if there’s a fire because I can’t get my dang skeleton keys to work!

I’m hankering something fierce for chocolate from home, so if friends and family are planning to come, please stock up first and save space in your bags for small chocolates. Those of you who know my candy jar at home (or school) know what I’m looking for. But I’m not picky. Also, it’s Mallomar season and MJ is buying me a box and saving it for December. If 9 more people would do that, I’ll be all set!

Related, I ate a family size platter of sushi for dinner tonight. I’d lost some weight since getting here (see chocolate paragraph above), and was starving, so I indulged.

The sweets here are okay and I’m making do, but I miss my peanut butter cups, Costco salted caramels and Costco S’mores. I’m rationing my supply of Watermelon Sour Patch Kids, and still have a bag and half. I’ve got quite a sweet tooth!

Okay, on to school tales. We looked at cause and effect today and I showed one of my all time favorite commercials that I always showed to my G&T Stretch students, the Honda Rube Goldberg machine. It turns out kids the world over love it!

They also loved working in groups with magnets, ramps, pulleys, cars and marbles while investigating force and motion.

My team met with our Learning Leader today and we had such an interesting discussion about the assessment tools we use. Like we did in Flemington, this school uses Moby Max, NWEA, and other online platforms. They’ve moved away from F&P and tread lightly with all American-based assessments because of the cultural bias. The children in my classroom come from all over the world and have lived in many places around the world. Many languages are spoken and although they have very global experiences, very few know American terms or even objects.

One thing I love is listening to the children’s vocabulary. It far exceeds anything back home (and with their accents sound so cute!). Today one of the students asked if we would be working at a provocation table and I had to look up what that meant! I’ll save you time…it’s a thoughtfully arranged, open-ended display of materials designed to stimulate children’s curiosity, wonder, creativity, and problem solving skills.

After work, I went to a colleague’s house. Her neighborhood is also close to school, but very different than mine. Since all the neighborhoods are gated, it’s hard to know what they’re like, so I appreciated this insider view. It’s probably about six of mine at least (I think she said there were about 500 homes) and has a very impressive security gate, tennis courts, fountain, pool, and beautiful landscaping throughout. She lives in a two story, two bedroom end unit with a beautiful little yard. While at her house, she introduced me to her housekeeper and gardener. Both have lost work recently and she was hoping I would take them on to work at my place. Both came home with me and were excited at the prospect of working in and outside the house! William and I both admired the yard and what it once was and what it could be again! We decided to start with a good clean up and go from there.

Finally, today was the 3rd anniversary of my mom’s death, though technically she died late on the night of the 29th. I have a picture of her by my desk at school and looked at it often today. I know she would be excited about my adventure and would definitely come visit! It made me happy to know we share the same wanderlust heart and sense of curiosity. She is right by my desk at work.