Cumpleaños, México, y CEIPA

¡Hola!  It has been two months since my last post.  Certainly more things have happened than I could fit into one post.  Following are some highlights from the last two months in no particular order.

The first weekend of October I, along with some other teachers, took a two day trip to Mexico.  The school provided transport and lodging and we got to enjoy a relaxing time in the sun by the pool at our hotel.  We were in Tapachula from Saturday afternoon through Sunday morning before returning to Xela.  It makes the weekend go very quickly and returning to work on Monday was a drag, but the relaxing trip was well worth it.

The sunset over Central Park in Tapachula

My birthday passed exactly one month ago today.  The students at IAS do a great job of celebrating their math teacher's birthday.  Every class sang in both English and Spanish and the most wonderful birthday cake was prepared by one of the 10th grade students.  Following are some images of the very fun day.

The students filled my board when interesting birthday greetings. 

Mariano Rivera recently retired from the NY Yankees.  The students felt compelled to honor him on my birthday. 

A wonderful birthday card from a very special third grade teacher.

Picture day was in late September.  I do not have a homeroom class so I didn't take a picture with any of the classes for yearbook.  However, the tenth grade class took pictures with all of their teachers a couple of days later.  Below, is a picture of me with the tenth grade.  The birthday cake pictured above was made by Ceci (far right).

Class of 2016

The most exciting thing for me professionally in the last two months is pictured below.  As you know, Inter-American School offers instruction in English using U.S. curriculum and standards.  Of course, there are a number of other schools in Xela that offer instruction in Spanish.  One of these schools is CEIPA (El Centro Ecuménico de Integración Pastoral).  CEIPA serves students who are working in streets and in other situations which have cost them access to education.  A number of teachers at IAS provide scholarship funding for students at CEIPA.  In an attempt to build relationship between IAS and CEIPA, a number of our students have been going to CEIPA twice a week after school to tutor in math.  It has been a really great experience for the students.  We went on Tuesday and Thursday for one hour each of the last three weeks.  CEIPA is currently in their summer break and we were working with students in a program similar to our summer school.  It was a little challenging for our students since they have all studied math in English their whole lives.  It took us a day or two to get used to doing math in Spanish.  Despite this, I think this was a valuable experience for all of the students and helped to establish some relationship between the schools.  Between 11 and 18 students from IAS went each time and we are hoping to continue this at some level next semester.  For more info on CEIPA visit http://www.ceipa-ac.org/index.php.

Carlos working with one of the CEIPA students

IAS students working together with CEIPA students.  The colorful bird on the wall is a Quetzal (see my last post for more info).

It has been a wonderful two months and the countdown to Christmas vacation is under way.  I will be arriving in Oneonta 5 weeks from tomorrow!  We have two and half weeks of classes left before a much needed long weekend for Thanksgiving.  I intend to have more posts before the end of the semester.  Thanks for reading and for your prayers!  God Bless!

This is just a picture of the graph of y=-secx that I turned into an pouty face.  I told the students this is how I feel when they misbehave.