Patamea, Friday, February 1st- Friday, February 8th, 2013
Currently reading: Why We Run: A Natural History by Bernd Heinrich
Well, I’ve been without water for a full week now. I don’t fully understand why but it has to do with the extreme amount of rain we’ve had the last week or two. It affects the water supply. This is the third time it’s happened since I moved in in December but this is by far the longest I’ve gone without water. Normally it comes back on the same day just a few hours later. I’m pretty sure my neighbors behind me have water back, though, because I think I heard their shower going earlier. When I turn my faucets on all I hear is the hiss of water trying to make its way through the pipes and into my sink but there isn’t enough pressure to push it through. Luckily, living on the school grounds means I have access to the gigantic container they use to collect rain water. It’s not ideal as the rain water is collected after it has pour down the roof of the school building collecting anything that might be on the roof (hint: there are a LOT of birds that hang out around the school). I filter and treat the water before I use it for drinking or cooking which is a bit of a chore involving lugging buckets of water several yards from the container to my house then pouring it into my filter after using a ‘ie lavalava to filter some of the larger chunks and then adding a few drops of bleach to sterilize it. The water then takes an hour or two to filter through so I have to repeat this at least once a day. I take bucket showers, which is actually kind of nice except in the mornings (people generally take several showers a day here) when the water hasn’t had a chance to warm in the sun and the temperature is lower than the normal 80+. But even still, a cold shower isn’t that bad. I mean, I’m living on a tropical island, right? The only real issue is that I don’t really have time to wait for the water to filter in order to wash dishes. So I don’t use treated water to wash dishes right now. It’s better than nothing. I do use antibacterial soap at least.
The second week of school went smoothly. I wasn’t completely clear on where to start with the students because I hadn’t been shown a curriculum, told what topics the teachers had finished with or where they were planning on beginning, nor shown any textbooks that the teachers use. The students don’t really have textbooks here. Normally the teacher will just write things up ahead of time or during class and the students copy it down. This is what many classes consist of and where the students get there “textbooks” from. With this being the case, I revised a literacy assessment from one of my textbooks to use with groups rather than individuals. It wasn’t ideal but it allowed me to gather some information about where the students were as a class and even shed some light on where individuals were at. I had students write their names, current year in school, the English alphabet, the numbers 1 through 20 (digits), and copy a sentence (The boys and girls are going to school). I had them recite the alphabet as a class. Lastly, I had them read basic body parts (head, eyes, nose, mouth, leg, hand) and match the word to a picture for several basic objects (boy, girl, table, chair, car, pencil, book, door, clock). Ideally this would have been done individually with every student but I knew my co-teachers were going to probably pick the groups themselves whether or not I did an assessment. So, I figured I would use a class period to gather as much information as I could to inform my future classes.
It helped a lot but I was still not very clear exactly where the students were with their English and where they needed to go. The students are divided into 3 groups in each year: one low-level, one mid-level, and one high-level. I chose to label the groups “A”, “B”, and “C” rather than the names “weak”, “average”, and “strong” that the teachers wanted to give them (they also regularly refer to students as vaivai, weak or valea, foolish/dumb to their faces). I co-teach 2-3 times per week with each year then meet with each group in each year separately once a week (9 classes). I used these classes to go over basic introductions (“What’s your name?” “My name is ________.”) which was actually needed and informative. I found the groups to be more or less well divided by current English-level although I think it will be a challenge when I try to talk to the teachers about switching students to different levels if need be. My first impression is that once they label a student “weak” or “strong” that label sticks and that is how the student is seen throughout their education. But we’ll see. I didn’t get to meet with all the groups because we had teachers’ meetings during class time a couple of days and then today and entire class was absent and I’m not sure why. All in all I’m happy with how my first week of actual teaching went. I have lots of ideas for where to go and have even found some curriculum books that list the learning objectives term by term, skill by skill (listening, speaking, reading, writing) for each year.
In my free time I’ve organized a fitness competition for the PCVs. Everyone who is participating puts WSD$10 into a pot. They identify their fitness goals for the term making them personally challenging yet attainable. Then we will be keeping track of our progress throughout the term and whoever keeps to their plan the best wins the pot. It’s simple, easy to participate in, and hopefully encourages some healthy lifestyle choices while we’re volunteering. It should be fun! I’ve been using a resistance band and some body-weight exercises I wrote down before coming here 5-6 days a week and running 3-4 days a week. I’m already noticing some changes with energy and weight/muscle so I think I’ll keep to it.
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