School Life - Conversation Club

This week I let the teachers who wanted to learn English know that we would meet on Tuesdays after school and any children who wanted to learn English we would meet on Thursdays for conversation club.  This week as I mentioned (about a 100 times) winter snow has come with a vengeance!!  It has snowed and snowed and snowed some more.  We have very little heat at school and it is extremely cold. But the other three schools in my village have no heat at all, so I consider myself (and our students) lucky. On Tuesday, 4 teachers showed up for conversation club, the other teachers reason was because it is too cold.  So the four teachers and I just stayed in the teacher's room and went over basic English for an hour.  My thoughts then on Thursday was that the children would not want to come in the snow and cold.  I went upstairs to the English room and re-arranged the desk, make it more kid friendly.  I put up my posters and opened the drapes for light (and of course to see more SNOW).  And then I hear a noise and I turned around and about 5 children came in, and then several more walked into class and several more and I ended up with 18 students ready to learn... WOW!!!!! I had purchased a few notebooks from the canteen downstairs in case anyone that didn't have a notebook.  And all of them went rather quickly.  I then gave out stickers to each student (thank you Paul) and told them each week that they come to conversation club they will receive a sticker and at the end of club, the one with the most stickers will win the prize of the "Native American Dream Catcher" (thank you again Paul). It was great to see kids who want to learn.  I wrote on the board "Row your Boat", a simple camp song for new words to learn and had them write it in their notebook.  We sang it several times.  I had a Azerbaijani co-teacher translated the song and the kids had it down after a few times singing it.  We played Simon says (but I changed it to Teacher says).  I think they all had fun, it was a good club.  I am excited to see how many will show up for our next conversation club.  So in spite of the cold and snow, I am so bless, that just maybe I will make a difference after all!!  So I want to thank all of you for your continued support, love and prayers (especially the prayers for patience and non violence) and your wonderful and very much appreciated packages!!

Life Challenge:  Quote by John Philip Sousa "I have always believe that 98% of a student progress is due to there own efforts and 2% to their teacher".