The never ending birthday song

Yesterday was a friend's birthday. We sat around the cake and did that which is traditional here: we sang happy birthday to him in four languages. As we all speak English, the English version began our birthday medley. Then we moved on to Papiamentu, the local creole. After that, we switched to Spanish and sang "Feliz Cumpleaños," and we ended by singing in Dutch. After four months here, I can now sing the first verse of "Happy Birthday" in each of those languages.

This birthday medley reminded me of our students' linguistic prowess. Many of them speak two or three different languages. The school offers classes in both Spanish and Dutch as a part of the curriculum. Most students are enrolled in both language classes. These courses are offered to grades 1 through 12. Each grade level has two sections of language to accomodate for both native and non-native speakers.

In the hallways, you hear students switch languages, depending on whom they are conversing with. For example, a Brazilian student might speak Portugese with a sibling, English with me, Spanish with the Spanish teachers, and Papiamentu with classmates. That student could be seen speaking 4 different languages in the course of a 15 minute break!

Exam weeks

Exams in the high school started this Wednesday and continue through next week Friday. As I am now teaching the 10th grade English classes, I designed the 10th grade exam. I was asked to create a two hour exam that tested students on the wealth of knowledge they accumulated over the course of the semester. I, however, had only been teaching their English classes for a couple of weeks. A couple of students helped me with this task by sitting me down and taking me through their notes. I'm pleased with the finished exam, but as it is entirely constructed of short answer questions and an essay, I won't be pleased with myself when it comes time to grade!

During exam weeks, the high school classes don't meet. That section of campus runs on a college-style exam schedule. Thus, I have chunks of time in between my elementary and middle school classes to catch up on grading. Between my 10th grade writing classes and the 10th grade English classes, I have mountains of paperwork to tackle... I just finished grading stories about the students' experiences with household disasters. They were engaging, to say the least!

My ESL middle school students are working on paragraphing. We spent the lesson today discussing conjunctions. Then I gave them 2 sheets of sentences that they had to cut apart, organize, and reword into a paragraph with a clear flow of ideas (sometimes using conjucntions to combine sentences). They'll turn the final paragraphs in on Tuesday. I'm curious to see how they do...