Day 15

January 14, 2010

 

Day 15

 

            In typical Marshallese fashion, the Secretary of Education didn’t approve the articles in time to get them published so the above article will be printed next week in the Marshall Islands Journal. Just like how she still hasn’t gotten us housing and we’ve been here over two weeks; and they’ve known we were coming since last February. But whatever,

            Today was a VERY frustrating day for me. I printed out the quiz first thing when I got to school and before I handed them out to the kids I thought, “I know damn well these kids ain’t studied for this test.” So in the nature of being a nice teacher, I say, “Okay, you all get five minutes to look over your notes before I pass the quiz out.”  Some people jumped at the opportunity and for others, it was obvious to me that they didn’t even have notes because they just sat there. Mind you, EVERY answer was written on the board at the end of yesterday’s class and they were all encouraged to write down the answers. I identified it as, The Answers to the quiz tomorrow.

            Well I graded all of my third period quizzes during third period and I was very disappointed. Most kids just didn’t follow directions after I specifically told them the directions to each part before I had them start. Others, clearly didn’t take the notes that I gave them. Yet they were writing something in their notebooks because I made sure everyone was writing. The class average was 13.3/20.

            My fourth period class did even worse. Naturally, they’re the less intelligent of my two classes but it was even more extreme than that. I would ask for the form of be for he, she, you, they, we and I and I got: going, went, Us. Mind you, I GAVE them the answers the day before and the forms of be are on the board EVERYDAY in class. My second class averaged 11.8/20.

            I don’t want to talk about it too much because I’ll just get even more frustrated but I told a few people on the trip about it and they gave me some ideas on what to do. It was also a brief conversation topic during dinner. Professor Garrod tried to provide some advice for how to reach the lower level students which I didn’t find particularly helpful but after dinner he and I were seated outside at the table together on the porch still talking about the situation. I was visibly upset and he definitely gave me some words that I needed to hear. He said, “You can’t get through to all of them. No one can. Even at Dartmouth, there are some students who aren’t on my side. Granted, there are some, quite a few more, that are on my side but there’s no way to get through to all of them.” I told him, “I understand that, but as a teacher I can’t just accept that” to which he replied, “Yes, but as long as you know that you gave it your all, you can’t beat yourself up about it. You don’t know what’s going on in these kids’ lives. Some of them just aren’t motivated.”

            I kept to myself for most of the night and fell asleep rather easily despite an early afternoon nap. I still hadn’t decided what to do about the lack of success amongst my students but I figured sleeping on it would calm my nerves and help me find some new ideas.

            Also, a quick note, and this is mostly for my family. But Elani and I are now an official item. For some reason it took 10,000 miles of separation to bring us together but God works in mysterious ways. That’s all I have for today, my battery is about to die. Until next time, from Majuro, barloeok.