It feels like it’s been forever since I last posted, and
things are starting to get crazy around here. It’s the end of first quarter,
which is totally unreasonable given that we have only had 3 full 5-day weeks of
school. The school gives us a grading scheme that we have to use, which
includes three tests and a final exam for each quarter. How they expect us to
get through enough material to give three tests is beyond me. I barely got
through my introductory unit by the end of the quarter. And then to have finals
every quarter? That’s just ridiculous. For a place that is so relaxed about
everything and cancels school randomly all the time, it’s very strange that
they have a system for how we have to grade. Then to top it all off, we found
out on Thursday that the governor was cancelling school on Friday as a reward
for doing so well academically over the past year. There are two giant problems
with this: 1. It totally sends the wrong message about the purpose and
importance of education by making it a reward to not have school, and 2. We
didn’t even do that well academically. Kosrae is doing a little better than the
other islands, but that doesn’t mean we are doing well. A lot of the grade
levels have below 50% performing at the level they are supposed to be at. All
of the Worldteach teachers have commented on how crazy this is, but it’s a
perfect example of how backwards education is here. So basically it’s been a
little crazy since first quarter ends next week. In a different way of thinking
about the end of the quarter, it means the school year is a quarter of the way
done, which is crazy to think about. Christmas break adds some time to it, but
aside from that, I’m almost a quarter of the way through this adventure. Time
is flying! Once I got settled into being a teacher here, things have felt like
they are moving crazy fast.
This week has definitely been the toughest one yet for me. I’ve
come down with a little bit of a cold and a really painful ear infection that
has made going to work every day a little harder, and then got some difficult
news from back home. I can’t bring myself to write very much about it here, but
I’ll just say it has been difficult to be so far away from home this week. My heart is definitely back home with Harvard Softball and
the Ricciardone family. I’ve been doing my best to channel the strength and
spirit of Lisa and teach for her this week. Laura, I’m sending as much love as
I possibly can your way.
Even with the tough week, I am lucky to have a wonderful job
and be working with some amazing students. One of my classes really made my
day, and they probably didn’t even realize it. It wasn’t a huge deal for them,
but I was so happy for a minute because of them. They were just being the
normal selves, but I had a moment towards the end of class where I just took it
all in because they were having so much fun learning and were so excited to be
learning. It was one of those times where you realize how important your job is
and you actually understand why people say that their students teach them more
than they taught them. It was amazing to see them so happy and having fun in
class, but that’s how learning should be. When you are a teacher trying to
shove all this information into your kid’s heads, it is really special to see
them actually want to be there and be enjoying it. So even though none of you
will probably ever read this, to all the students in my 4th period,
thank you for being the bright spot in my difficult week.
I’ll end with something totally hilarious that happened to
me in class on Monday as a result of the language barrier. I was teaching
mixtures and pure substances to my chemistry classes, and one of the types of
mixtures is heterogenous. When I first said that, my entire class erupted in
laughter. I figured out pretty quickly that it meant something in the local
language that must have been funny, but I couldn’t get anyone to say what it
meant loud enough for me to hear, so I just moved on with the lesson and talked
about how this will probably happen again, but we need to be able to move
forward and use this new vocab term throughout the class so we need to get over
it. My kids got over it pretty well, but then I was worried about my next two
classes. I was debating whether to warn my second chemistry class, but decided
not to and I got the same reaction, but it lasted a little longer. They thought
it was absolutely hilarious every time I said “heterogenous,” and they would
whisper it to each other and laugh hysterically. Again, they wouldn’t tell me
what it meant, so I went on with the class and again used it as a teaching
moment about maturity and being aware of the language differences. After this
class, I had lunch, so when I saw a couple of my students walk by, I went and
asked them that I needed to know what it meant. They kind of stared at me for a
second, and then one of them said “penis” pretty quietly. No wonder they were
all laughing! I was basically standing up there saying “penis, penis, penis” in
their language. After that I went into my final chemistry class at the end of
the day totally prepared, and I warned them ahead of time that they were going
to hear something inappropriate in their language, and that it was okay to
laugh, but we would need to be mature about it after, and they were still
surprised when they heard it. They took a second longer to react, and I think
they were just surprised to hear that come out of their teacher’s mouth in
class. Then after a second of processing, they all died laughing. I got a few
good laughs out of this, and am still laughing thinking about it. This is a
hilarious teaching story that I’ll remember forever. This takes “you learn
something new every day” to a whole new level.