Teaching Time

Friday afternoon I was sitting in the English classroom trying to figure out how to make learning “numbers from 1-999,999” fun for my students, when in walked in one of my former students, Ovidio. Ovidio is by far one of my favorite kids here at NPH (shhh don’t tell the others…). He is incredibly respectful (and respected by the other kids), really inquisitive, always wants to learn more, soooooooo smart, well-behaved, an AMAZING artist, and just one of the sweetest people I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing. He always wants to give you hugs, always asks questions to learn, and has an incredibly positive outlook on life. When I first got here Ovidio (who was in my Primero Basico class) was in the hospital. His appendix had ruptured, he’d had emergency surgery in town to fix it, it had then gotten infected and no one was really certain of what was going to happen. Through it all, Ovidio remained the positive, wonderful young man that he is – looking to the future and believing that everything would be ok. He truly is a remarkable 16 year old.

Now Ovidio came to the English Department on Friday and I began asking him how I could make my lesson plans on numbers more fun and interesting for the kids in my classes. He sat there trying to think of games for us to play…and while he did so he rattled off all the answers to the questions on the worksheet I was going to give to my class on Monday (he makes me proud as his former teacher ;-)). He then flipped the page in the textbook and found himself face to face with a page full of clocks. I asked him what time it was and he was completely quiet. I started to joke around with him – “C’mon Ovidio – what time is it?”… “I don’t know…” Turns out he had never learned how to properly read a clock in Spanish. (I know, I know, mean Jess - but how was I supposed to know??) So what did we do? We spent the next 20 minutes learning how to tell time. Like I said – he’s a REALLY smart kid – 20 minutes (and someone to sit down and teach him properly) were all he needed. After a few examples of each of the different times (2 o’clock, 5 o’clock, 8:30, 1:30, etc) we moved up to counting by fives and within minutes he could read ANY clock that I gave him without a problem. Seriously – one of the most amazing and determined kids I know – and a pretty rewarding afternoon for me too…good times in English :).