Monday, November 16, 2009

Move-A-Thon

Last Friday our school had its first annual Move-A-Thon. DAIS is made up of some pretty fortunate students, so we decided to give back to the community. We also did it to break in the new track that was just finished. Let's just say the weather on Friday was frigid. We set up an indoor track inside for students to run/walk/move on when they were too cold. I was expecting my students to make it for about 10 minutes outside...boy was I wrong. They made it the whole hour in the morning and then also again for the hour in the afternoon. We actually had to make them come inside in the afternoon and finish up inside.


Ji Won and Chan Min getting credit for a hard earned lap!

The atmosphere and determination was contagious. The students and all of our staff were so pumped and excited. Earlier in the week we found out that Volkswagen donated 20,000RMB (about $3,000 USD) to our cause. We raised money for two community projects, one being a backpack project for kids that don't have school supplies for the Chinese New Year. The other project is microloans to local families that the high school students are going to manage. All the kids did a phenomenal job of moving. My class ran a total of 376 laps, between 10 kids. Ji Won and Zach were amazing running 51 laps each.


My students coloring a Thank You banner for Volkswagen


The finished product

It was so cool to see the kids excited and feeling like they are making a difference. I'm not too sure the parents were too excited having to fork overall that money, but it's for a great cause! I feel so blessed to be a part of this school. The environment is amazing, the kids are so motivated and want to learn, my coworkers are all so dedicated and in it for the students, and the parents are all so willing to help. What more could a teacher ask for?


Ethan making his way around for another lap


This week I have report cards due. Report cards are different than in the States, much more information goes into them. They are annotated explanations on the progress the student is making. I wrote an average of 1,000 words for each student explaining how he/she are doing, what he/she can improve in, etc. Needless to say I am busy this week.

1 comment:

JulieMonte said...

Beckham's school did something similar. The fun run. They played music while the kids ran for an hour. The track was smaller than a regular track but he did 35 laps about 2-3 miles. They had shirts with a circle printed on the back with numbers 1-35. each lap they did a teacher marked off a number. They couldn't do more than 35. Beckham LOVED it and wanted to do it every day.