Day 11: 4th Floor

Another day, another dollar... well, paid by me that is. Oh well. Was able to talk with my teacher and feel comfortable with the differences between elementary and middle school and will be teaching math on Monday! That and I'm planning a lesson for my science class tomorrow as review, so it's a big time right now :)

Two things I wanted to address. My substituting for science has been really disappointing because the curriculum is so strict that the only way the specifications can be covered (especially since I don't know what they are exactly and saw the lesson plans 10 minutes prior to being in front of the class full of students) is through writing vocabulary words from the section, reading it, doing the section review problems and completing a worksheet recommended by QSI. I know with more time and freedom, I could meet the standards of the school and help them learn in more creative ways, but it's been frustrating feeling powerless over the absent teacher's wishes. I feel pretty useless; thankfully some kids had questions about the section today and I secretly said "hallelujah! I'm worthwhile in here!" Anyway, it was a very different experience than I've been used to, but hopefully tomorrow will put a little zing back into it :)

So it's been interesting at our host family. The host mother gets very easily frustrated with the youngest and we feel as though she's pouring all of her high expectations into him. It almost seems as though she's, for lack of a better phrase, given up on her eldest son and he does much of the housework when they're home. This morning, we heard lots of frustration and anger from her towards her son. They get up every morning and sit in the kitchen from 6am until breakfast and she reviews his coursework with him. She leaves little time for him to process the question (which is huge for him! His disability causes him to process longer and have slower responses, much of the time she cuts him off before he's had time to process the question...) and berates him in frustration. At one point, I may have heard a hit of some kind. We told Tim all this this afternoon when the oldest son's aide came up to Keri and I after school asking if we'd seen Alex, the youngest. Needless to say, most of the staff searched for an hour and couldn't find him. He was supposed to be in after school art class but wasn't there and some of his things were still at the school. We didn't know what happened to him! Finally the staff called his mother and she went home to find him there, he must have gotten on the bus instead. This didn't make mom happy either... we had dinner at my mentor teacher's apartment tonight and didn't see her for more than 30 seconds tonight, but this may become an even stranger and more awkward situation. Thankfully Tim has urged us to be completely honest with him and has offered us residence at his house again, but we don't want to inconvenience him and his family and want to at least try to see this through. Keri and I talked about it and we'll at least be staying here through the weekend, giving the benefit of the doubt that its a stressful time and they're still adjusting to school/work after vacation, etc. In all, it's been rough but we're making it.

Today was fairly stressful, I apologize that I have just Negative Nancy things to say today. But tomorrow's another day in Astana! And we're going to a village orphanage outside Astana tomorrow with the U.S. Embassy to give away toys, so that'll be incredible to see some Kazakh villages and such. We live, we learn and we move on. Crazy to think we'll be back in 12/13 days though...

Chels