Sunday, April 10, 2016
Personal Troubles
Don't Hide Jesus
Wednesday, December 24, 2014
The Testimony
by Jean
1. The Lord helped me set up an Internet activity check off booklet, using parts of an Internet booklet I made a couple of years ago, plus adding new parts.
2. The teachers and schedule managers gave me three computer classes each week with each of my classes, and worked it out so a Thai teacher could supervise in the computer lab each of the times, except the one where another English teacher could come in.
3. The Thai teachers have understood how the booklet works and done well in supervising those classes while I took groups out for reading. This gave me three reading classes a week, so I am able to get to all the reading groups. The students were even able to entertain themselves on the computers one day even though the Internet wasn't working. Also, when the principal wanted me to go with the group going along with the children's choir, the Thai teachers were still able to have the computer classes those days.
4. The Thai teachers and I are coordinating better now.
5. The ten classes a week gave me time to have the students practice their Christmas play performances and to make some Christmas crafts.
6. The other part of the 10 classes is supposed to be for giving the students some English vocabulary for what they are studying in Math and Science. The 4th graders are studying the Solar System, and I still have a book and copies of activities to go along with that, which a team made and left here two years ago. The science teachers have helped me in finding out what the students are studying in 5th and 6th grade. The Lord helped me to get just enough activities in Math and Science ready to make it to the time for Christmas worksheets and activities.
7. The Lord helped me to assemble just enough things for the students to do for the classes I had with them in December up until the two-week break, after they finished their curriculum unit.
Now, my prayers for these two weeks are for guidance and help to get Math and Science activities ready for those classes and to be able to get the curriculum materials ready for the last two units and the reviews, and maybe even the mid-term tests.
I am also praying for guidance on what to do with the other hour of class I have that I was using for play practice.
I am also still praying for the phonics program to come. It would be especially beneficial when the Internet is down.
Saturday, November 1, 2014
The next step
By Jean
This is how it appears the day before school starts with the new schedule.
The Thai teachers did work out a schedule where one of them is scheduled to be in the computer lab to monitor the students for three classes a week for my classes. A couple of those teachers don’t speak much English. I don’t know how much they read of it.
The 5th grade needs three classes so I can fit in all their reading groups. This means they will have more computer time overall, though. The 6th graders will be doing a couple of extra computer projects, so they will use the third class that way. The 4th graders didn’t need three classes so much, but maybe that will give me more time to work with the three low students.
Today, I am trying to finish a booklet with activities that the teacher can check off when students get a certain score at different web sites. I am hoping this will give the students something worthwhile to do, and be something understandable for the Thai teachers. It took me a day to get all the web sites into the favorites on the accounts of all the students.
The other part of the 10 classes deal is that we are going to try to coordinate some teaching of English vocabulary for what the students are learning in math and science. This also will require regular communication between the Thai teachers and me.
This schedule provides plenty of time for extra projects, such as practicing for an English Christmas play or answering pen pal letters. The difficulty is class management for the students who finish projects quickly or who don’t have a part to practice.
Tomorrow it begins.
Tuesday, October 21, 2014
The Start
Today I received part of an answer. I was told that now the homeroom teacher for each grade is supposed to be available to watch the students if they go to the computer lab. If that is true, then I can make an on line assignment for the half of the students who are not reading that day, and I won't have to have them in the room with me. The unexpected part of this is that the class schedules have been changed so now I have each grade twice a day. Instead of the 8 classes a week with each grade, I now have 10 classes with them. It's one of those mixed blessings. There will be more time to fit in reading, but also more empty time to fill in for the other students.
Coming Glory?
This is the first half of what is supposed to be a great story, the difficult part, without the glorious ending, yet. These two verses keep coming to me about the situation. One is Ephesians 3:20 in the NIV that says, "Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us," or as the Amplified version says, " ...far over and above all that we [dare] ask or think [infinitely beyond our highest prayers, desires, thoughts, hopes, or dreams]—..." The other is Psalm 27:14 from the Amplified Bible, " Wait and hope for and expect the Lord; be brave and of good courage and let your heart be stout and enduring. Yes, wait for and hope for and expect the Lord."
According to the Ephesians promise, there will be a glorious ending, beyond what I could imagine. Then, there is the command in the Psalm to expect and wait for the Lord to work. I will add that part after it happens, next month. Right now I am writing this with the tremulous expectation that there will be a glorious ending. My heart is not quite stout about it.
There are two things, related things, that I am praying about.
The first one is guidance on how to set up something for my classes of 15, 16, and 10 students in my room. Most of them need to be occupied so I can read with half of them in small groups on days when I don't have an adult to supervise them in the computer lab.
So far this year, I have had those classes in the computer lab, but turned off the Internet and had the students do our resident English program. The 5th grade has now finished that program and the 4th and 6th are nearly done. Now they really don't have anything to do on the computers for that time, so I will have to have them do something in the classroom.
If they don't have something clear to do, and something to fill in the times when they finish their assigned tasks ahead of other groups, they will start wandering around the classroom, picking on each other, and destroying things. The reading groups won't get finished if I have to keep corralling the others.
The Lord has provided some resources for the situation, Alphasmart keyboards for typing sentences, a listening station for 4 students on one CD, some games, and one computer with a few interactive computer games. The difficulties will be filling in the down time for groups that finish their activities before the group reading is done, making sure everyone has time to type their sentences, figuring out the group sizes, and having something for the half of the class who aren't reading on that day.
I will be praying through this and planning it out this month and then see the results next month.
The second item is the coming of the promised phonics game/program. This has been in the works for 5 months already, but nothing has shown up at school yet.
It appears that this program would be a good replacement for the resident computer game we have now. It is promised to run as a resident program, so, once again, the students will have something to do when the Internet is disconnected or unavailable. It will provide an answer to the dilemma I have about the finished resident computer program.
Beyond that, it should provide individualized help in letter sound recognition that so many of my students need, and some very critically.
It sounds wonderful, and God is putting it together, but in His timing.
This all reminds me of the story of Gideon starting in Judges 6. He faced an impossible, terrible foe 6:2; 7:12, . Then the Lord reduced his worldly chances of success even more by greatly reducing his army (7:8) just before gloriously scaring the Midianites away. Gideon obeyed the Lord in each step up to that end. He pretty much thought the whole idea of overcoming the Midianites was impossible from the start, so the crazy directions from God were really the only hopeful thing to do.
So, now I am trying to follow His guidance in each step to accomplish this not quite as impossible task and looking for that glorious answer.
Monday, August 11, 2014
God’s Odd Provision
By Jean
It could have been quite serious. A sudden stop on a motor scooter going 50 kph. The Lord allowed me only scrapes, bruises, and a hard bang to the head making a cut requiring 4 stiches. What happened to my helmet, I don’t know.
Darrick arrived the night before and I had the day off. My 90 day check in time was coming up, and, since we don’t take more than one adult passenger on our motor scooters, Gary and I decided it was senseless leave Darrick alone or take two scooters and drag him into an Immigration Office experience.
So, I was driving myself along the inner ring road toward the Immigration Office. The next thing I know I am having a kind of day dream about having the right kind of documentation.
I think, “I shouldn’t be daydreaming, I’m riding a motor scooter.”
Then I opened my eyes to find myself sitting on the sidewalk. Straight ahead of me is a pick up truck stopped on the side of the street with a flat front tire. A little to my left, on the sidewalk, is my parked motor scooter.
“Oh darn, I’ve been in an accident,” was my next thought.
A lady was there asking for some kind of identification from me, so I pulled my passport out of the papers I was taking to Immigration. I should have given her the laminated passport copy and my WA driver’s license that I had in my zipped up pocket for such situations, but I wasn’t thinking too clearly. The ambulance people and the police were already there, so I must have been out for awhile. I am still waiting for one of those special powers to show up that people get from a good bang on the head.
Then I decided I had better call Gary. The lady talking to me figured out what I was doing and told me to tell him the ambulance was taking me to some hospital that I couldn’t understand. Gary was wise enough to tell me to tell them to take me to McCormick. That was a hospital familiar to us, and my records were there.
My injuries were minimal enough that the ambulance driver had me sit in the passenger seat up front so he could put in the back a more badly injured man on a stretcher he picked up at a local police station before going to the hospital.
Gary and Darrick met the ambulance at the hospital and took care of all the admitting questions.
The cat scan of my head showed no brain injury. They also x-rayed my chest a little later, but they didn’t say why.
When I finally got to my room, Gary asked me more about where the accident was so he could go find my motor scooter. He went there and walked around in the rain for a couple of hours, but he couldn’t find it. All the information about the insurance coverage we had for accidents on that scooter were in the seat.
Towards evening the young man who had been driving the pick up, and his friend, came to see me in the hospital. Through their Thai, a little of mine, a drawing on paper, and an English word or two from them, they told us that they had turned in front of me with the pick up. It was too hard to get a much more detailed description than that about where I and my motor scooter and my helmet went after that. The best part was when they told us that the police had my motor scooter!
The next morning Gary went to my school to let them know I wouldn’t be there and to have Kru Maow help him find out where the police had my motor scooter.
It turned out that a young man, Mark, with experience teaching English was there that day. He was going to help me with my classes, but he ended up doing them for me. He did very well with such short notice.
Gary finally found the police station with the scooter and was able to get the insurance information back to the hospital before it was time for me to go. It was a good thing that it took them all morning to get through their discharging procedure.
Praise the Lord, the insurance paid for all of the hospital bills.
Gary and I went straight to the police station to see if we could get my motor scooter and to give my statement to the police. They insisted they needed an interpreter to talk to me, so they called Kru Malee.
She was on her way to a government office downtown with a few other people to take care of some school business, but she finally agreed to come over. The young man who was driving the pick up came over too, after awhile. The police decided he was at fault and everyone worked out what he would pay to fix the motor scooter. One of the policemen is supposed to be fixing it.
My helmet and sunglasses were gone, though. The police said the helmet went in the ambulance. It didn’t come out with me, though.
To get home I had to ride behind Gary without a helmet on. Just as we turned on to the ring road there was a police stop checking for helmets. The policeman stopped us and said he would give Gary a ticket. Suddenly Kru Malee ran up and explained how I had just lost my helmet in the accident yesterday. The policeman accepted her comments and didn’t give us a ticket. Then we made it home ok.
The next day I went to school to give Mark some ideas of what to do for the next couple of days. Then I went home.
This gave me a chance to spend a couple of days with Darrick that I wouldn’t have had. Also, Monday and Tuesday were holidays and days to rest up anyway.
That evening, I found my sunglasses in the bottom of my backpack.
I guess God can’t show His protection and care so much unless there is something traumatic to protect us from.
:J