Hi Everyone!

After a couple days of teaching, we have built many relationships with both teachers and students here in Antigua. We wanted to take that to another level while we are here. The students are very easy to make connections with because they are so eager to be learning from us, probably because we are new faces to them. The students are willing and excited for us to be working with them because they know we are only here for a short amount of time. It is a little saddening when the students ask"if we can stay longer".

We have connected with our students by getting to know the students personally through different lessons. This has given us the opportunity to know what the students like to do, what activities they participate in, and what their favorite food is, while giving the students an opportunity to get to know us as we share similar details about our lives with the students.

When it comes to our relationships with our host teachers, it is very beneficial that we were in communication with them for two months before traveling to Antigua. We built these relationships with our host teachers through WhatsApp oremail. So, going into the classrooms with some previous knowledge on what to expect was very helpful to us. It was nice to then put a face to the name once we got into the classrooms! 

Over the past two days we have continued to develop these relationships, and some of them are becoming very strong and others are a work in progress that is headed in the right direction. Either way, we are constantly learning from them and taking some of their teaching techniques to bring home with us and implement in our classrooms.

One thing that many of us are working on when it comes to our relationships with the teachers is being able to collaborate with them rather than take over the classroom. Some of us feel like the teachers need a break, and since we are in the class, they can take advantage of that and take that needed break. This is beneficial to us because we can work on our classroom management skills.

However, there are so many things we can learn from our host teachers, and we don't want to miss out on that. Many of us have made plans to have conversations with our host teachers or work them into our lesson planning so they feel like their teaching abilities are valuable to us. We are very excited to have a front row seat in seeing our relationships with our teachers grow.

Olivia and Sarah with three students at the Adele school after finishing learning the letters A and B