One, Two, Three - Time to Read

My schedule is a little bit of everything since I teach 6th grade every Monday, teach three different English classes and two 5th grade classes.
There were only three rambunctious boys in my fifth grade classes until last week when one of my girls was moved from 7th to 5th grade. She's older than the boys in her class but she can't read or write. Because of this she will probably not pass her classes although she can copy everything written on the board but not understand what she's writing. Besides my Social Studies class that I have with 5th grade I also have a reinforcement class also known as an hour to study and do homework or study for quizzes or tests. Come last Monday, during the study hour I had Zulma pull up a chair and sit next to me as we went through the alphabet. I have zero experience with teaching someone how to read but I decided that my trying to help her was better than doing nothing at all.
Last year in college I took a class on how to help struggling readers who had fallen behind but the kids always knew the basics and I didn't have to start from scratch like I'm doing with Zulma. Luckily, it's Spanish that I am trying to teach so I don't have to worry about teaching the letter names and the sound or having her memorize site words.
We went over the alphabet sounds and she knew almost all of them so that was encouraging.
Next time together she learned her vowel sounds and what a vowel sound then we started to blend two letter words together. Turns out, I don't know a lot of two letter Spanish words but it's ok.

I'm excited for her to learn and although right now her motivation for learning to read is because she does not want to be embarrassed in her classes, I hope she'll eventually find a passion for reading and spend every minute that she has expanding her mind, exploring new worlds and imagining and creating different images when she picks up a book.

.......

Not to be dramatic or anything but I had it in my mind to pack up and go home after one of the girls from Wiemar told me that they'd seen a flying snake in the jungle while the group heading to the zip line tour. I've seen those nature videos about those snakes that can glide from tree to tree but when I learned that they are literally living within twenty minutes of me I had to calm myself down and ask twenty or so children if they'd ever seen a flying snake and after 19 no's and 1 yes, I felt more at peace. Still, there seems to have been an uprising in snakes recently. After 5 months I'd only seen one dead snake but within these last two months I've killed a snake, seen a baby boa and there's been two bigger ones in Miguel's house that have been found hiding out. The day I find a snake living in my upper story house is the day where I will really weigh my necessity to be here against my fear of snakes.