Mis Niños

The other significant aspect of my trip of course was the relationship I formed with my students. I was assigned to teach five classes in five different levels of English, and in each of my classes I was able to bond with my students. It was trying, frustrating, and exhausting to teach every day, but it was the most fulfilling and rewarding work I've ever done.
The first class I taught was on January 3, mere days after arriving in Tehuacan. I was exhausted and overwhelmed and I was terrified to teach. My first class was a seventh grade class with seven twelve-year-olds. I had little to no experience with Tweens and I was truly afraid of being eaten alive. I need not have feared, though. My children welcomed me immediately. They fell over themselves telling me all about themselves, their lives and their families. By the end of the first day I knew their stories and their secrets and I was already well on my way to loving them all. Over the next four months, they challenged me and they questioned everything. They made me laugh and they made me cry more than once. From my seventh graders I learned humility and grace, and how to survive an earthquake. It truly broke my heart to say goodbye.
I love today's picture because it was from one of those extremely rare perfect days. After two difficult and (to be honest) boring days of struggling to understand the perfect tenses of verbs, I decided to reward my kids with some downtime. We went out onto the grass and I read The Little Prince out loud while they listened for adjectives and uses of the past perfect, present perfect, or future perfect. It was exciting to see them correctly identifying the verbs, and touching to see them so engrossed in my favorite story.