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.