A Minha Escola em Guija

We technically started school last Thursday, however I have still yet to meet all of my students. The first few weeks of school are spent enrolling students, teachers still planning lessons and students deciding when they are finished with holidays and ready to come back. There are about 1000 students at the school and 4 English teachers - two English teachers for 8^th-10^th and two for 11^th and 12^th grades. The students in the 8^th-10^th receive 2 classes of English/week, while the students in 11^th and 12^th receive 5 classes/week. I will be teaching only in the morning (from 7am to 12:05) and will have 4 turmas (classes) of about 40 students each. My schedule changes depending on the day – Mondays I have six classes (3 doubles/duplas) with my three 11^th grade classes, Tuesday I have two classes (1 double/dupla) with my only 12^th grade class and Wednesday…So far the students have pretty good I have yet to have a full class with all of my students so we’ll see how things go when I get 40 students in a classroom. I did have something funny happen the other day in class when we were going over classroom rules. I asked the students what it meant to respect yourself and then asked them to give me examples in English/Portuguese…one student decided to say in Portuguese with the most serious face that not peeing in your pants was one way to respect yourself, besides being true his comment definitely generated some great laughter! More stories to come…