Day 35

February 3, 2010

 

 

Day 35:

 

            My day started with me waking up early to get some work done, fixing myself a nice breakfast and semi-lounging around the trailer until time to teach. Once I got to school, I put my stuff in the room and was looking through my Marshallese Language book when Barren, a kid in my fourth period class approached me. He was one of the boys I sent to the office yesterday for showing up 30 minutes late. They didn’t let him try out for the basketball team because he skipped my class, per Shoniber, the middle school coach. He said he wanted to go to practice today so I said, go up and ask him if you can. He then told me he was scared of this guy which is completely warranted. This guy is a straight asshole to these kids, most of the teachers and even the principals. He was the one going off on everybody in the teacher’s lounge a couple weeks ago when the school wouldn’t kick out a kid who missed 20 days. The guy doesn’t really scare me but I could see how he scares everyone else. Also, I have nothing against the guy personally. He has yet to disrespect me in anyway so I have no reason to disrespect him. Now, I wouldn’t ask him to go get a beer either. I just have yet for him to give me a reason not to treat him fairly. Well anyway, Barren asked if he could come to practice. And Shoniber, as usual, was a douche to him. They spoke in Marshallese the whole time and so I had no clue what he was saying. Eventually Shoniber told him to show up after school. My presence certainly had some weight in his decision because he was not budging at all. My philosophy about the whole situation, though, is that if you tell this kid he can’t play ball then that gives him one less reason to want to come to school. Let this kid try out and maybe he’ll come to class more regularly for the simple fact that he can play ball. So that went fairly well.

            In class, third period was a little wound up today. I just overcome the apparent ADD that has invaded my class. I honestly believe a third of my students have ADD/ADHD and my fourth period is even more. There was a period when I watched Bobby, 3^rd period Bobby, and actually saw the Attention deficit. I told him to sit down and draw. He sat down but didn’t have any paper or a pencil. So I actually saw him look at his stuff and realize that he was missing something but he couldn’t figure it out. So then I called his name and asked what he was doing. Side note: between third period Bobby and Fourth period Bobby I say Bobby at least 60 times a day; I’m gonna count tomorrow. So I remind Bobby what he needs, he gets that “Oh Yeah” face and then comes back to the desk to get some colored pencils and a piece of blue paper. Then he sits down and completely has no idea what he’s going to do. So he drops his pencil on the ground, reaches to pick it up and then I lost him – he saw someone behind him and started listening to their conversation. I thought it was funny at the time but it’s really not, this kid cannot concentrate on anything and the school only has Special Ed programs for people with physical impairments.

            Fourth bell was amazing today. I don’t know what it was about them but they didn’t talk trash to each other. They didn’t hit each other. They were little angels. Everyone did some sort of work, except Jota and she never does ANYTHING. Even Kalani showed me her story that I had been asking for for three days. Now she has two days to draw pictures for it.

            After class Terri and I talked about how we were gonna get through to two of the slower students: Jefferson and Henchi. Jefferson is by far the slowest student I have. He doesn’t understand English, he hardly understands Marshallese and he never communicates so I don’t know if he’s smart or not. Terri works one on one with him a lot and she was just so defeated today by him. She showed me an exercise she did with him and she just didn’t know what else to do with him. We eventually decided that we needed to start back with phonics because he’s just that far behind.

            After that I went back to the teacher’s lounge at the high school and did stuff online until about 2:30. Around then I went to the trailer changed and got ready for practice. I went to the courts a little early and wrote out a practice schedule. I waited there close to an hour while watching the middle school kids practice when I decided to go back and check around the school for Tony. Turns out Tony hadn’t even posted teams yet. So I went to play rehearsal and there I found out from the character Horatio, Paul, that Tony had left school about a half hour before school was over. So I stuck around play practice and went upstairs with Edie to work with the Ophelias and Laertes. It was nice to get to see them on a smaller scale outside of being in front of the whole group. I mostly worked on some more Marshallese while I was there but I chimed in and watched every once in a while.

            After that we all went back to the trailer where I continued in the Marshallese book until Eric finished cooking. He had prepared a chicken parmesan, a zucchini ( I think) stir fry and some macaroni noodles that he had prepared with some sort of seasoning- I didn’t recognize it. It was a good meal though. After eating we all dispersed. I went over to the girls trailer to go over some Marshallese with Edie and Anna. They had just been asking their students about how to say certain things. I’d been studying the book, so we had a lot to offer each other. They gave me pronunciations and I gave them reasons why certain words are used and some vocabulary. It was quite productive. I now know seven different tenses in Marshallese and four different types of pronouns. The next step for me is to get some natives to say these words for me so I can hear how it sounds from the natives. I can conjugate present, past and future now, though, which is nice.

            Lastly, I’m beginning to get annoyed. Today as I was leaving the library to go to a different room with Edie, the Ophelias and Laertes, I noticed on the tack board right outside the library where teachers post announcements, I noticed that my name was written four different times on or around the tack board. Apparently, when I talk about this it sounds like I’m bragging about it and I’d like to make it public that this is nothing to brag about. It’s annoying. Genuinely. Apparently, I can’t talk to anyone here about it without seeming like a douche either, so this is officially the last time I will mention anything about the high school girls in relation to me. I genuinely don’t want these girls to know that I live on campus though. I’m not sure if I mentioned it or not, but the first day we moved in, I went into the trailer to get something before going somewhere, and when I came out, like 5 minutes later, there were 7 girls standing outside the trailer looking at me and giggling when I came out. That’s just not cool with me. If you wanna speak to me, then by all means speak, I’m a nice person I’ll talk to you. Maybe even in Marshallese now. But the little shenanigans they pull are annoying. Anyway, I’m done rapping. Until next time, from Majuro, bar lo kom!! (the right way to say it. I read it in a book)