I have been writing to Felise every day I am in the office – nowadays, we communicate through a notebook on her desk, since she is at the Bothell location on the days I am in.  However, she has been in South Korea for the past few weeks, so I have been writing all of my daily updates on that notepad.  It’s a bit odd, writing update after update with no reply, but she’ll be home in another week, and I’ll get to read all about her trip!

            The twins have been sick this week – poor kids.  However, I spent my time in class working with a kid whose language skills have just started developing at an astonishing pace this past month.  He hears both Spanish and English at home, that that is definitely reflecting in his speech patterns in class as well.  Because of this, we must use teamwork – our classroom leader (Wendy) does not speak Spanish, and the rest of us only have high school-level proficiency, so we must all fill in each other blanks to understand what he is trying to say.  Also – very funny – he knows exactly where the power lies in the classroom.  I have to struggle with him, physically and mentally, to have him do something he doesn’t want to do, but he listens to all of the adults – especially Wendy!

            I also learned today that there will be no class next week Thursday, which means that I will be filing and creating Welcome packets again for four hours.  Not the most stimulating work, I can assure you, but it must be done, and it makes everything  and I suppose it is all part of gracious professionalism.  I do wish it was easier on the feet, though.  There is a lot of running around involved.

            Lastly, we had some problem-solving to do, since one of the girls was afraid of the toy snakes.  We had to do a whole routine of hitting the snake on the ground and pretending to give it kisses to get her to even come near it.  Thankfully, we didn’t have to do it for too long, and she eventually was able to hold one of the snakes in her hand without any anxiety.

            My goal for next week is to get through making all of those Welcome packets that Felise left for me – I want to get her whole list of things to do done before she gets back.  As for long-term goals, an example of a way of measuring long-term effects that my internship has on these kids is the increase in language abilities in the one child I wrote about above as a result of the combined efforts of the team (his speech patterns also reflect the phrases and sounds we often use for the children to learn to imitate and associate with certain activities or objects).