Staff Blog

For the past month and a half, the older girls of CSC have had the chance to experience "girls night". Almost every weekend, two girls are invited to my apartment for an evening of fun! 

The event starts long before the weekend even arrives. On Monday after school the group for the week is told that they are invited to girls night. Their excitement is immediate, and only builds over the coming days. On Wednesday the girls are given menu choices. I have  a variety of dinner dessert choices that the girls have the chance to agree upon, and then make. Many of the foods on my list are meals that are uncommon here in the Philippines, so I often have to explain what the meal consists of. So far, each group has chosen something that they have never tried before!

At 4:30 on Friday, the girls meet me at the guard shack. From there, we get a ride down the road to One Pavilion, a shopping center near my apartment. I give the girls a list, and they are then responsible for finding all of our needed ingredients. Once we check out, we make the trek to my apartment on foot. It has been fun to provide this experience for the girls, and have the chance to teach them life skills like cooking and grocery shopping. When we arrive at my apartment, I give the girls instructions on how to prepare the food. Everything we eat that evening will be prepared and cooked by the girls. 

Cooking has been a joyful experience for all involved. Jonnalyn and Andrea enjoyed mixing up and frying meatballs. Jannice and Pretchy made some interesting choices in dessert (corn and cheese ice cream!!). Joanna Mae and Hannah devoured their tacos (they each had about 5!). Adelyn and Ven Ven went into a sugar coma with s'mores dip. Cheryl Mae and Sarah got messy kneading cookie dough. 

The final event of the evening includes watching a movie. With these girls, it was no surprise to find my collection of chick flicks exhausted. Like any teenage girl, the girls of CSC are saps for a good romance movie...especially a Disney one! Watching their reactions to particular scenes has been the most entertaining part for me. Cheryl Mae almost started hyperventilating as the kissing scene in Pride and Prejudice approached, Jonnalyn giggled constantly during A Cinderella Story, and Janice melted at the romance in The Lizzy McGuire Movie.

With the rotation of teens finished, I can say that girls night has been a great success! I look forward to many more nights of fun with these wonderful girls!

Roxaboxen by Alice McLerran was the last story in our theme on Imagination in reading this quarter and it was the best story I have ever heard for this theme.  When I was reading before the class started, I was fascinated with how the children in the story enjoyed their childhood life and played all day with their neighborhood friends in a village they created from stones, boxes, and desert glass.   Even after the children in the story had grown up and moved away, they still remembered the make-believe village they had created so long ago.  After reading the story, I remembered my childhood days with my brother, sister, and neighborhood friends.  We did not create a village like Roxaboxen, but we played in the mansanitas tree, rode our bicycles, and ran in our neighbor’s garden taking the fruit and vegetables.  I wish I could go back to where I grew up, full of enjoyment and excitement.

Every child has memories of his childhood days.   After we finished reading the story in class, I asked my Level B2 students to share experiences from their childhood days.  They all shared about their life at the shelter.  Similar to my experience, they have not had a Roxaboxen, but they are very happy and enjoy playing with their friends at CCHS. 

In order to experience this make-believe Roxaboxen a little bit more, we made our own small town on a board filled with beads for stones in between houses drawn on the board. 

Everyone was so excited.  While we were making our own Roxaboxen, my students felt like they were in a real place.  They used their imagination to create a great Roxaboxen of their own.  Congrats kids!

Remember!  “Laughter is timeless. Imagination has no age. And dreams are forever.” So never stop imagining and dreaming.  God Bless!!!!

-Clayd Verzales, Level B Teacher

Morning Meeting!  This is one of the most popular activities in school that CCHS children look forward to.  Each level is given a slot every quarter to share what they have learned in SRA (reading and language arts) class through songs, poems, stories, and other activities. 

Level B1 students did a great job in their morning meeting last week.  They shared about kindness and sharing stories, the two most recent themes they had covered in reading.  There was a variety of presentations. 

One group of students shared a song about kindness.  

Another group told a story using hand puppets.  

One of the boys talked about sharing stories using a big hand-made book.  

The children ended the morning meeting with a dance about sharing.  

It was fun to see Level B1 students perform!

Typical day in the therapy room: student having his speech therapy session with the therapist.

Conversation:

The therapist asks, “Where do French fries come from?”

Without any pause or hesitation, the student answers, “McDonald’s!”

My co-therapist and I burst out laughing. I know we are not supposed to laugh when a student makes a mistake, but we couldn’t help ourselves. It was so cute! The answer does make sense though, if you are a kid. The student just looked between me and my co-therapist with a look that said, “Okay, so what’s funny?”

It was, in fact, a true and genuine answer coming from a seven-year-old boy. McDonald’s and its counterpart, Jollibee, are a hit here in the Philippines, especially for the young kids at the shelter. It is a big deal for them when they are able to go to one of these establishments. (My blog is not about advertising for these businesses, by the way.)

Sometimes as adults we are so caught up with our adult stuff that we forget how to live life like a child, worry free. The kids at the shelter remind us that, in spite of the difficulties they have already faced at a young age, we have a God who is bigger than our worries.

I sat in the therapy room with the speech therapy session still going on thinking how blessed I am to be in this environment. I teach and treat kids with special needs and in turn, they too, teach me even more. As an English proverb says, “The soul is healed by being with children.”

Of course, most of the students at Cebu Children of Hope School are from the shelter since that is the main reason for the existence of our school.  However, over the years we have had a handful of community kids attend the school for varying amounts of time.  There was VJ, Andree Kaye, John Ray, Rufa Mae, Christian, and a few others.  CCHS is not big enough to be able to open its doors to the community at large, so we have always brought in community kids just by word of mouth.  It has usually been the case that a commmunity student attends CCHS because he cannot go to another school due to extenuating circumstances. 

For the past three years we have had our hands pretty full with the kids who need schooling from the shelter, but we had our eyes and ears open for a community child who may fit into our school.  Well, meet Lael.  Lael lives with his family nearby and his parents heard about CCHS from someone who works in their church.  Lael is eight years old and suffers from a rare syndrome called Lennox Gestaut Syndrome.  His mom and dad have been looking for a school where Lael can interact with other kids his age in a safe, caring environment. 

Last week Lael started attending CCHS for library and art classes two times a week.  It was a great start for everyone and we are excited to have a new student in our midst.  After all, we are Children of Hope for children of hope.