New School Year

Last Monday was the first day of school here in SVG, and I'm pretty excited about the new school year. The teacher I worked with last year is now the literacy coordinator (!) and I will be working with her to teach a literacy curriculum to students in all Forms. This is a BIG step up from last year, when we worked only with Forms 1 and 2. We are starting the year with tons and tons of reading assessments - we will be testing all students in Forms 1 and 2 (320 +), as well as several Form 3, 4 and 5 classes. Once we get through testing, we will be pulling the weaker readers from their classes and working in small groups or one on one. We will also be making recommendations to English teachers based on the classroom weaknesses. It's a lot more work than last year, but definately necessary! I have really high hopes for this year, I think that we will be able to accomplish a lot with our students.
I'm still working on more or less the same things as last year, with one new addition - I am going to be working with a running group. Another volunteer and I are working with Vincentians to form a running team to compete in the 2009 Run Barbados event in December. This is a pretty big deal, running-wise, and a HUGE deal for the kids, who might not otherwise get to travel outside of St. Vincent. We're trying to take about 15 kids, including one of my girls from the Guadalupe Home! We're really excited about this, and I will keep you posted on our progress!
This past weekend, one of our male volunteers got married to a Vincentian girl. Obviously, we all turned out to show our support in our fancy wedding attire (i.e. the one nice outfit that we own). It was a beautiful ceremony and I am really glad for the happy couple. I'll post pictures in a few days.

Summer Update

Just a quick update on my summer activities. I am teaching a summer music camp at a primary school in my community. I'm working with 20 5th graders and we are learning music basics as well as how to play the recorder. The school had the recorders donated through SVG's Social Investment Fund (SIF), which was established to aid poor, rural communities in community development. Working with youths is a really key part of community development, hence the recorder donation. The camp meets twice a week for an hour each day, and we'll meet for 6 weeks. So far, it's been a really great experience for me as well as the kids. We just finished our second week and the students have learned basic musical symbols (treble clef, staff...), the notes of the treble clef AND their first song (Hot Cross Buns). We're also working a lot on rhythm - clapping, banging on desks, using homemade percussion equipment (plastic bottles and dried beans, anyone?). I'm pretty sure that's their favorite part, perhaps because they get to make a lot of noise? It's really a lot of fun, and I hope this is something I can carry into the next school year. I also hope to incorporate everything we learn into an end-of-camp concert. I think that would be fun for everyone - kids, teachers and parents.
The music camp is my main project, but I'm also doing a bit of poetry work at the Girl's Home. Each week, I'm having them look at a different poem or type of poem. Then we discuss it and they write their own poem in that style. It's been a little slow going - critical and abstract thinking really isn't something that is encouraged in the schools here, so I'm having to push the girls to get them to "think outside of the box." So far, we've looked at Ntozake Shange's "i live in music," and limericks are next on the schedule. I would like to get into my favorite poet, e. e. cummings, but that's pretty abstract, so we'll have to see. Ideally, I would like to see the girls create a poetry book, where they record poems they've read along with their responses and interpretations, but we'll have to make it through limericks first!
And that is basically my summer. I have put cooking class on hold for now, since I'm travelling around the island a lot on my off days. Our new group of volunteers comes in about a month, which is exciting (new people!) and sad (the older volunteers are leaving) and strange (I will have been here for a year!). Hard to wrap my head around it. Then school starts and it's back to work, work, work. Why is summer always so short?

You Know You're a PCV in the EC When...

10. Your decreasing grammatical ability is a strong source of pride and you find yourself using phrases like, "Who he?" and "Way dey at?" increasingly often.

9. Febreezing your dirty clothes and hanging them out on the line is JUST as good as washing them.

8. Three hours of church no longer fazes you.

7. Acceptable dinner choices at the end of the month include plain rice and popcorn.

6. You vaguely remember that timeliness is a virtue, but have forgotten why.

5. You know what nutmeg looks like on the tree.

4. Sometimes you go to bed at 8 o'clock, because it's been dark for over an hour and there's really nothing else to do.

3. There are two seasons: rainy and less rainy.

2. You have at least one of the following in your backyard: fruit tree, spice tree, vegetable patch, goat.

1. You don't think you have it in you to catch and cook a chicken, but you've considered it on several occassions.

Term 3

Sorry for the lack of posts lately. The problem is, once I get into the swing of things at school, I rarely do anything interesting enough to post about.
We're in our final Term, which is the CXC Term. I'm pretty sure I've written about CXC before - basically, it's a series of subject tests (English, Maths, Sciences) that Form 5 students take. The scores are used to get into college or apply for jobs - simply graduating from high school doesn't have as much weight here as is does in the U.S. Emmanuel High School is a CXC testing school, which means that our students don't have to go to a testing site to take their exams; they do them right at the school. This is good in many ways - I'm sure it's more relaxing for the students to write their exams in a familiar setting and no one has to travel far for testing. It also has negative aspects. The school is overcrowded already, so on heavy testing days, students are asked to stay home by Form. Today is Form 1 stay home day; since I work primarily with Form 1 students, this has also become Shelby stay home day (hence the midafternoon blog post and the clothes-line full of freshly washed laundry). I'm really not a fan of Forms stay home days - it's pretty disruptive for students and teachers, especially because the "stay home" schedule isn't set very far in advance. Case in point, we found out yesterday that today was Form 1 stay home day. I also don't think that such a significant portion of the school should miss out on entire days of learning just so we can be a CXC testing school. But I guess there will always be disruptions.
I'm still working on basically the same things I was in Term 2, although I am no longer teaching the Form 1 Integrated Science class, which was a good turn of events for everyone involved. This freed up a lot of time for me, so now I am reading more often with my Form 1 class and am able to take a few Form 2 reading groups as well. Plus, the class gets a qualified science teacher. I'm still teaching the Grade 5 music class, which is going much more smoothly the second time around. I'm really just re-teaching everything we went over in Term 2, the main difference being that during Term 2, I still had no idea what I was doing and now the kids are actually learning something. Cooking class is still going strong, but lately I've been scraping for inspiration. Yesterday, we made carrot bread, which turned out DELICIOUS! I got the idea from http://www.allrecipes.com/, but I had to make several substitutions based on what I had in my kitchen. Here's the final recipe...

Carrot Bread

Ingredients:

3/4 cup sugar
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 cup jam (we used papaya)
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup shredded carrots
1/2 cup chopped toasted pecans

Directions:

1. Grease a loaf pan and coat with flour. Set aside. In a bowl, combine dry ingredients.
2. In another bowl, combine jam, eggs and vanilla. Stir into dry ingredients. Fold in carrots and pecans.
3. Pour into loaf pan and bake at 350 degrees F for 50 - 55 minutes.
4. Enjoy!

I've been compiling all the recipes we've used and I hope to make a Cooking Class cookbook in the future. My mom gave me the idea and I think it would be really neat for the kids to have their own cookbooks, especially since they will have cooked everything in the book.
In other news, it's really hot here. We're just starting our 6-month hot season, which is a depressing thought since it's only getting hotter. August is usually the peak month - I'm just trying not to think about it.
[Aack! I just looked at the weather icon on my blog, and while it's only 86 degrees, it FEELS like 98 degrees...in May.]

Eggplant Parmesan

2 posts in 2 days?? Unprecedented? Yes. Winds of change? Sadly, no. Just a short comment on a couple of unexpected things that happened to me in the last few days. First off, remember my complete lack of a green thumb? Well, it must be slightly reversible as I have eggplants! That's right. Turns out, my enormous, yet worthless eggplant is not as barren as I initially expected. This weekend, I came home to no fewer than 6 little eggplants that quickly became medium sized eggplants. Now, I mentioned a few months back that I don't really care for eggplant. This turns out to be not entirely true. I quite like 1 eggplant-based dish in particular - if you haven't already guessed, it's eggplant parmesan (seriously, if you didn't guess that, you might consider some critical thinking exercises). This leads me to unexpected thing number 2 - so do the kids in my cooking class. Seriously, if someone had told me last week that I could get these soda and chips guzzling kids to eat eggplant, I would have laughed. I only chose the recipe because a) I needed to use up the eggplant and b) I thought it would be great fun if the kids cooked me dinner, but they gobbled it up! If I were a really good PCV, this would morph into a summer gardening/fresh vegetable cooking extravaganza, but it's REALLY hot in the summer. We'll have to see. For those of you who are interested in trying the Vincy children approved recipe, here it is (from www.allrecipes.com).

Eggplant Parmesan

3 eggplants, peeled and thinly sliced
2 eggs, beaten
4 cups bread crumbs
6 cups tomato sauce
16 oz mozzarella cheese, grated
1/2 cup parmesan cheese, grated
Fresh basil to taste

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F
2. Dip eggplant slices in egg, then in bread crumbs. Bake for 5 minutes on each side.
3. In a 9 x 13 baking dish, spread sauce to cover the bottom. Place a layer of eggplant slices in the sauce. Sprinkle with cheese. Repeat with remaining ingredients, ending with cheese.
4. Bake for 35 minutes or until golden brown.
5. Enjoy!

Laboring Under a Misapprehension

Term 3 began Tuesday at Emmanuel and I was actually excited to start. Over the break, I thought a lot about my Form 1 reading program and decided to make some pretty significant changes. Last term, I focused primarily on a handful of students who needed the most help and only sporadically read with the other students, if at all. This is a good strategy, since the students who are furthest behind need the most attention, but I hated neglecting the other students - in the end, they are ALL in the remedial program. This term, I have more free time since I'm no longer teaching the Integrated Science course (that's right, we're getting an ACTUAL science teacher), so I'm going to use that extra time to work with every student in my Form 1 class (all 40). I've created reading groups of 4 students and each group will meet with me twice a week, every other week. We'll read a story and work on critical discussion the first time, then the second time we meet, I want the students to write something about what we've read and discussed. I will still spend extra time with the few students who need the most work, but this way every student gets the opportunity to improve. I was especially excited about this method, because there are also a handful of students in this class who I think could be quite good readers, with some practice. I kind of hoped that if I worked with some of the more motivated students, perhaps they could improve enough to get out of the remedial program and into regular classes. I understand that the remedial program is a necessary part of the school, but it's certainly not a pleasant one. There is a huge stigma associated with the program - it's called the dunce class by students and teachers alike, there are lots of behavioral problems and many teachers don't even bother with them at all. For these reasons, I was excited at the possibility of getting even just one student out of there. Excited, that is, until I ran the new program by the Form teacher, who told me straight out that no students were going to be moved. They were labled "remedial" from elementary school and would remain "remedial" throughout high school. And no amount of improvement would change that. Which leads me to the question...what am I doing here? If these kids are being marked as "failures" at the tender age of 11 (which is when many of them take their high school entrance exams) and there is no opportunity for them to move away from that, then what am I doing here? Sure, any reading help is good and necessary, but it's not going to solve the central issue, which is, of course, if you consistently tell a kid that he is a failure, he will FAIL. And barring all possible exits from the remedial program tells the kids just that. That they are failures, that they will always be failures and that no amount of work could possibly prevent them from failing. Plus, students in the remedial program are so far behind in the curriculum that if they do beat the odds and make it to Form 4 (the remedial program ends at Form 3), they'll be so far behind the non-remedial students that no amount of work could catch them up. Which I think is the ultimate argument for moving motivated students up NOW, while they still have a fighting chance. As it stands, these students are simply being conditioned to fail, which, in the end, fails us all.

Parent's Visit

My parents flew out early this morning. I think they really enjoyed their visit to St. Vincent. They were only here for a week, so we didn't get to do nearly as much as we wanted, I guess that's how it goes. We spent 5 days in Bequia, the closest Grenadine to St. Vincent. We stayed in this really charming apartment called The Nest. The complex is called The Three Trees and it's made of three apartments stacked on top of each other, kind of like a tree trunk. Each apartment has a wrap around wooden veranda with amazing views of Port Elizabeth. It was nice to wake up and have coffee with a view before the daily tourist-ing. One of our tourist-ing activites was a sailing expedition to Mustique, another Grenadine. We went on this boat called the Friendship Rose. It was built in the 40s to carry cargo between St. Vincent and Bequia, but has recently been refurbished to carry tours between the Grenadines. The man who built it is still the captain! It took us a little over an hour to sail to Mustique, where we de-boated and explored the small island. Turns out, not that much to explore. We walked through all the shops, had ice-cream and collected sea-shells...then we still had a couple of hours to kill before lunch! I guess Mustique isn't treasured for it's activity!
Back in St. Vincent, we got a chance to walk around and my parents met some of my friends here. I was happy for them to see my community and understand more of what I do. I think they return today with good memories and a better understanding of life in Mespo.