Nearing the End

Now that I'm in my final months of service in St. Vincent, I've been thinking a lot about what I will miss and what I will not miss. I'd be lying if I said my 'Not Miss' list was short. It isn't. It's very long and runs deeply perpendicular to my strongest ideals and beliefs. But I'd hate to spend my last months focused on the negative, so I'm going to talk instead about the things I will miss. There are, of course, the obvious ones - my friends, my students (even if they drive me absolutely crazy...which they do most of the time) - but I think it's the subtler things that really make St. Vincent for me. I will miss the green. I will miss the way the mist slips over the mountains after the rain, enclosing the valley in a blanket of clouds. I will miss running toward the ocean, tasting the salty blasts of wind before I feel them. I will miss sitting on my porch, watching the hummingbirds flee from the safety of one banana tree to the next. I will miss the solitude, the pervasive calm of the island. So much of my happiness here is entwined not in my job or my accomplishments, but in the island itself: in the ocean, the mountains, the stars, and I worry that when I leave I will lose some part of my happy among the throes of daily life in a big city*. I know that my post St. Vincent adventures will bring new joys, and a big part of me is excited to discover them, but another part wonders how I'll feel to share an apartment building with 500 other people, to exchange mountains for skyscrapers, to lose sight of all but the biggest stars. My life in St. Vincent has been frustrating and stressful and exhausting, but I'm really happy here, and I hope I don't lose that when I rejoin "civilization." I hope that I will be able to carry St. Vincent with me even as I move away from her.

*When you live on an island of 100,000 people, any city is a big city!

Spelling Bee

I was asked to prepare my music students to play a couple of songs at their Primary School Spelling Bee, which was today. Most of my students forgot their recorders or to practice, but the four that were ready played "The Lion Sleeps Tonight," and "Ode to Joy," and sounded magnificent! We've been working on "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" this term. I've been trying to find more difficult songs for them to learn, but they only know six notes, which makes it hard. Also, recorder songs are tricky. There are lots of songs that use only three or four notes, and lots of songs that use all the notes, but very few that use six. I guess if you're going to play the recorder, you need to be able to skip straight from beginner to very advanced. Anyway, I'm always proud of them when they work up to and play a concert.
The spelling bee was fun to watch. There were two rounds. In the first round, one third and one fourth grade student from each house (blue, yellow, red, green) sat on the stage and spelled. Each student was given five words and if they were unable to spell a word, the word passed on to their third or fourth grade counterpart. A correct first spelling was worth five points, while a correct second spelling was worth three. In the second round, one fifth and one sixth grade student from each house went up. The second round words were a lot harder and included words like 'rheumatism!' I don't remember learning that stuff in sixth grade! I was sitting with the fifth graders and during the first round, the girl next to me kept saying, "These are easy words!" Naturally, she didn't say anything during the second round. I guess her spelling overconfidence doesn't extent to words at her grade level!

Sports Day

Last Wednesday was Sports Day at EHSM! It was held at a big stadium in Kingstown and it was pretty neat to see our students fill the stadium in their blue, yellow, green and red house tee-shirts. Very colorful. The students are grouped by house and age - Junior (under 14), Intermediate (14 - 16) and Senior (17+) - and run the 1500m, 1000m, 800m, 400m, 200m, 100m and the 4 x 100m and 4 x 400m relays.
The event ran smoothly until after lunch, when it got out of control! One of the senior students had gotten in trouble the previous day for hurting a teacher and was banned from the races. He didn't hurt her badly, but I completely agree with the principal's decision to ban the student. It is unacceptable for a student to strike a teacher. Anyway, after lunch, he tried to participate in the 800m and was, for obvious reasons, called off the field. Then he was called off the field again...and a third time...and a fourth. Finally, after he failed to respond to four announcements, a police officer was sent to escort him off the field. The officer identified the student and asked him to please leave the field, at which point the student sat down on the ground and refused to move. When the officer tried to pull the boy up, he cursed several times and hit the officer in the chest. After this incident, several police officers went on the field and escorted the boy off. As if this weren't bad enough, the entire school then decided to show anti-police solidarity and refused to participate in any events...for about a half hour. We finally got Sports Day up and running again, but the mood was definately dampened.
I'm a little scared that the students in my school are so quick to hate the police. I'm glad there's a strong sense of student bonding, but that boy was definately in the wrong and it makes me nervous that the other students can't or won't distinguish between positive and negative police action. I know that a general distrust of the police is common in every country, but it is disurbingly wide-spread here. Parents teach it to their children, who bring it to their peers, which leads to episodes like that at Sports Day. It's a chilling thought. What happens when a generation of youths who both distrust and dislike the police grows up?
I'll try to post pictures of Sports Day this weekend.

Family Learning Program

It's March and my New Year's Resolution of blogging more is already shot. I guess that's why I rarely make New Year's Resolutions. Anyway, to make up for my poor resolve, I'm going to make a few short posts about what I've been up to lately.
Back in February, I attended a seminar on the Family Learning Program (FLP) hosted by the Caribbean Child Support Initiative (CCSI). FLP encourages stimulating interactions between young children and adults in the home and greater community. They believe activities like storytelling and creative play improve both the children's future success in school and the adult's self-confidence in reading and parenting. CCSI works with groups like the Roving Care Givers, who travel to homes around the island to teach parents how to help their children learn and grow. I attended the seminar, along with two colleagues, to learn more about an Innovation Grant for Ideas on Family Literacy and Learning. CCSI is funding small scale projects that engage families in innovative learning activities, and EHSM wants in! I'll be working with our school counselor and our literacy coordinator to come up with a proposal. We're in the very beginning stages, but I'll try to keep you posted. Especially if we get a grant!
Beyond that, I just want to say a few words on how important it is that adults interact with young children! I know that sounds obvious, but it is so lacking in St. Vincent and, I imagine, the rest of the world. Too often, we see students who go home to parents who don't take the time to read with their kids or help them with homework or even talk to them, and unfortunately, these kids grow up to have irreversible social, behavioral and academic problems. Young children need stimulating interactions with adults! What they glean from such interactions is not something they can obtain later in life from peers or teachers. There's a small time frame in which kids learn (from adults) how to socialize, how to behave, how to work, how to live and once you pass that, there's no going back. It's a disaster after that.
So, if your parents ever read to you or told you why the sky is blue or taught you to whistle or tie your shoes or make an omlete, thank them. Those small interactions gave you a giant step up!

Term 2

Hello again. A few, quick words on the new school term. We're three weeks in, and I'm working a little more than I was last term. That's actually a recurring theme in my life here. As I slowly get my bearings, I am able to take on more and more. This is fine for a Peace Corps Volunteer, but I really feel for first year teachers, who walk head-on into such an overwhelming situation. I'm finding that I really am getting better at the whole teaching thing. My lessons are more interesting, I relate better to my students and I even have an easier time with classroom control. This term, my students are focusing on the elements in a story, specifically 'setting,' 'characters,' and 'main event.' We're reading a lot of different types of stories and then dissecting them: discussing themes, answering the 5 Ws and 1 H, relating them to our lives. My students are especially enthusiastic about the last part - they really like finding a relationship between the books they read and their own lives. I'm really excited about this unit, because it's something that all my students can do, from the absolute beginners to the most advanced. It's also a way for me to teach a complete reading course. We look at the words, of course - we sound them out, spell them, practice them - but we also look behind the words, at the meaning they hold for the story. I hope it will be a successful and busy term, despite the looming sports interruptions.
I've also changed things up a bit in my music class. Instead of learning new songs this term, we'll be writing them. That's right, we've started a unit on composing. It's a pretty big change from what we've been working on, but it's in their music curriculum (which I finally got a copy of), and it pushes creativity, so I'm 100% for it. We had our first lesson on Monday - some get it, some don't, but they all seem excited by the change. Let's hope it lasts.
Finally, I'm working on a big project with the Adult and Continuing Education Office. We're going to host the first ever Career Fair in our community. I got the idea at a meeting I attended last year. One of our program participants mentioned that while the office helped people attain higher education, it didn't provide any job support to help them use the higher education. So, I suggested a Career Fair to the Zonal Coordinator and we're running with it. We're inviting local businesses to come conduct informal interviews, college representatives to talk to people about getting a degree, and of course, unemployed community members. This is a real first for the area, so I'm excited to see how it turns out. We're planning for sometime in late February.
On a unrelated note, I just finished a book that I'd like to recommend, The Dogs of Babel by Carolyn Parkhurst. It's a really beautiful, original and truly haunting love story. It's a quick read, too - I finished it in about a day, although that might be because I couldn't put it down! If you're looking for a new book, I definately suggest this one!

Holidays/New Year

Sorry it's been a while. My life starts to feel so normal here that I don't register change as much. I forget not everyone lives on a Caribbean island. Fortunately, one of my New Year's Resolutions is to update more often. And take more pictures. Happy New Year!
I just returned from a 3 week vacation in the US. I visited a bunch of cities(Kansas City, Houston, St. Augustine), ate tons of delicious food and went into total sensory overload in places like Target and Wal-Mart. The superstores in Kingstown take up about 500 sq feet, smell like moth balls and sell everything from flip flops to matresses, but they just don't compare. It was a complete whirlwind of a vacation and I was surprised at how quickly I re-adapted to America. To be honest, it was hard to come back to SVG, but my first day back, several of my neighbors and friends stopped by to chat and hang out on my porch, and I remembered why I like it here. Even without a Target.
School starts back on Monday. It's the dreaded "Sports Term," which, you may recall is about as conducive to learning as cartoons. There will be lots of missed school over the next 2 1/2 months, but at least the students will be getting some exercise. My schedule looks about the same - reading classes, music classes and after school tutoring. I might throw in some chemistry, but I have to talk to the teacher first. This week, we have a couple of teacher planning days and grades are given out, so I still have some desperately needed time to transition from 'vacation mode' to 'work mode.'
Let me backtrack a bit. In December, another Peace Corps volunteer, a local volunteer and I took 5 Vincentian students (aged 10 - 17)to a running event in Barbados, Run Barbados (clever name)! We'd been planning the event for months, but it definately came together at the last minute. Our funding proposal was accepted about 1 1/2 weeks before the event, so you can imagine how hectic that time was (buying plane tickets, getting passports, reserving hotels, registering for the race, etc!). We made it and it was an absolutely incredible experience for everyone. We were so happy to get the opportunity to introduce the students to another culture, and even happier to do it in a way that played to their strengths (running). Three of the five hadn't travelled outside of SVG, so it was neat to watch their reaction to things we consider ordinary, like malls and movie theaters and swimming pools. We all competed in the 10K race on Saturday, December 5th. I finished in 1 hour and 42 seconds, and our oldest student, Linda, WON the race for her age group! The whole group did really well and had a lot of fun!
In other news, the Great Peace Corps Read is still going strong. I just finished "The Geography of Bliss," by Eric Weiner, which I highly recommend and "Snow," by Orhan Pamuk, which I don't (unless you're into slow reads). Next up: "The Winemaker's Daughter," by Timothy Egan, followed by "Memoirs of a Geisha," by Arthur Golden. Read any good books lately? I'm open to suggestions, assuming we have it in the Peace Corps library.
That's all for now. If you trust me to keep my resolutions, you should hear from me again in about a month.