Crazy Canuks

Sunday was the longest day ever! Anna, Natalie, and I spent most of the day together. We woke up around 8 in the morning and went to George’s kitchen to eat breakfast. I ate some good fruit from the ultimate fruit man. After being here for a little over a week, I feel like I know the island so well. People that live here are starting to recognize everyone in our group. I see my students, other teachers, and the parents of my students around the island. A lot of people know us as the teachers from North Carolina. There was even an article about us in the San Pedro Newspaper, so now more people know what we are doing here.

After breakfast, we relaxed at the pool and then at 1:00 went to Crazy Canucks. Crazy Canucks is an awesome restaurant right on the beach. There, we had a meeting with our two professors and Dan Van Patten. Dan is an amazing drummer and he plays music with his band at restaurants all over the island. Derrick, the extremely talented guitar player is in Dan’s band. Natalie, Anna, and I have decided to make a video on Derrick and his life as a young talented, guitar player in San Pedro. I am really excited about this project and getting to know the people in this band. We hung out at Crazy Canucks for a really long time, talked to the band a lot, and had a great night. It felt like the longest day ever.

Everyday is the Best Day Ever

Saturday was the best day ever. Well, everyday is the best day ever. In the morning Anna, Keri, Natalie, and I decided to rent bikes from Pedro’s. It felt amazing to be on a bicycle! The streets are confusing on this island. It’s risky business riding a bike here since there are no traffic lights and only a few stop signs. In the beginning of our bike ride we turned onto streets the wrong way and Belizeans yelled at us. A golf cart almost ran me over several times. After about ten minutes of riding, we finally started to understand the streets and we were cruising around. It was a beautiful day outside, and riding our bikes on the beach was incredible. We rode to the yoga resort, Akbol. The resort is owned by one of my student’s parents. After locking up our bikes, we explored and found a wonderful pool, a trampoline, and hammocks. After spending 2 hours at the resort, we rode our bikes to Pedro’s.

In the afternoon, the bike group rode our bikes around, looking for the earth hour parade. Earth hour happens once a year, and it’s when the whole country shuts off their power for one hour. Students from San Pedro High School were in the parade. Some played instruments and others held candles. I loved riding my Belizean bike and I cried when I had to give it back.

Carnivale

On Friday morning, the students at Isla Bonita prepared for the carnival before the parents arrived. The carnival took place outside and each class set up a table. The tables had things like posters, student work, music, and some of the students had individual presentations. While the parents were arriving, the math teacher came up to me and asked me to make a poster for the class that I have been teaching. I was disappointed because my class was the only class that was disorganized and didn’t have a table set up. This past week, I got the impression that two of the standard IV teachers are extremely lazy and apathetic as to what happens in the classroom. They weren’t involved in any of the lessons that I taught the boys and they didn’t help me with any of the planning.

After all of the parents sat down, the principal spoke. She made an important announcement about parents that haven’t paid their dues. Apparently, the school still needs 18, 000 dollars to be paid, and the teachers weren’t going to get their full checks. The teachers told us that all of the children that attend Isla Bonita are well off and middle class. I was confused when I heard that parents weren’t paying their dues. Maybe some parents don’t believe that an education is important, and they just think school is something for their children to do during the day. Part of me thinks that some the teachers treat school like daycare. For example, the teachers here let the students watch crazy rated R movies. The students said they are always working on projects. The teachers probably just assign projects, so they don’t have to spend a lot of time actually teaching.

In each class, three students received awards for achieving the highest averages this past semester. I put up a picture of Reuben after he was given his award. Reuben had the highest average for my class the past two semesters. On Saturday I ran into one of my student’s parents and talked to them for a while. They told me that their son was crying all day on Friday after he was given his report card. The student’s average went down ten points and his parents were upset that the teachers didn’t let the parents know that Rome was struggling in the classroom. Rome’s parents are going to the school after Easter break to ask his teachers to let them know what he is having trouble with.

Friday night a bunch of us went out to eat and then wondered around town. Natalie, Anna, and I sang karaoke…more like screamed.

226-Good

Thursday afternoon the Isla Bonita teachers had a meeting at the San Pedro Public Library. We talked to the librarian about the Easter activities that will be taking place at the library next week. As part of our community service here, we will be helping children do Easter arts and crafts for a few days. Also, we will be reading some Easter books and watching movies.

After the library meeting, we went to Estel’s to hang out before the Creative Arts Festival that was at San Pedro high school. All of the elementary school teachers volunteered at the festival. We helped out with selling tickets and food. The children that performed at the festival were all dressed up and looked so cute! There were a lot of dancing and singing performances and a big audience, so hopefully a lot of money was raised for the different schools on the island.

2 dogs, turtles, chicks and 9 boys

On Wednesday, a boy in my class named Luigi asked if he could bring his dog into school on Thursday. I am being serious when I say that he asked me that question about one hundred times. The first twenty times he asked me, I said I was sorry and that he couldn’t bring it to school. Eventually, I would either shake my head no, or I would just ignore him. Sure enough, I walk into the classroom on Thursday morning and Luigi and his dog were there. I was worried because I thought the principal would be angry with me, but it turns out that bringing dogs to school isn’t a big deal at all. There ended up being two dogs, three baby chicks, and a turtle in our classroom that day. At Forest Hills, it would have been a huge deal for all of these animals to be at school and it’s probably not allowed anyway. Wednesday afternoon I found out that all of the classes were having a party on Thursday to celebrate Easter and the ending of the semester. Since the three standard IV teachers haven’t been around and don’t communicate with me about anything, I decided to plan a field trip to the beach. When I asked the principal about the field trip, she told me it would be okay, but she was worried about Sam. On Thursday morning, the principal called me into her office and told me that she was thinking about having Sam stay at school while we went to the beach. It just happened to be Sam’s birthday and I wasn’t going to leave Sam at school on his birthday while everyone else celebrated at the beach. I found out that Sam doesn’t get a lot of attention at home and that’s probably why he misbehaves a lot. It seems like the school doesn’t really know how to deal with Sam, so they punish him all of the time. I think Sam just needs more attention and someone to work with him one on one. At Forest Hills, there were teacher aids and classrooms for students with special needs. There is nothing like that in the schools in Belize. On Tuesday, my class was in the computer lab and they were practicing typing. I saw that Sam wasn’t typing correctly, so I went over to him and showed him the right way. I spent about ten minutes with Sam and helping him type. At first he was frustrated with how slow he was typing and he told me that he could type faster the way he usually does. After convincing him that if he continued to practice typing the correct way he would be able to type much faster, he actually tried really hard. I encouraged him and told him I was really proud of him. The smile on his face made my whole day. Anyway, I wasn’t going on that field trip without Sam and that’s exactly what I told the principal. She told me that she would ask one of the teachers to come with us.

At 10:00 my class piled onto Teacher Aidan’s golf cart. Once the boys got on the beach, they immediately started a sand war. They weren’t supposed to go swimming, but when I turned my head one of the boys jumped off the dock. Eventually all of the boys were dripping wet and covered in sand. At lunchtime, I walked to a pizza place on the beach and ordered a pie. The boys enjoyed their pizza and when everyone was finished eating we walked back to the school at 12:00. The principal told me that everyone decided to go home early, so we could leave school as well. I walked back to Pedro’s with one of my students that live near the hostel. I love talking to my students and asking them about their lives.

Sunlight + CO2 + Water + Chlorophyll

When the bell rang at school, the nine boys in my class stood at the front of the courtyard and the rest of the school lined up for an assembly. On Tuesday I taught the class about photosynthesis. One of my teachers briefly stopped into the classroom and asked me to teach a lesson on the process of photosynthesis. I asked one of the boys for their science book and turned to the section on photosynthesis. None of the boys in the class knew anything about the process. I glanced at the science book and ended up teaching an impressive lesson on photosynthesis. Anyway, I helped the boys make up a skit on photosynthesis and they performed it in front of the school at the assembly. They acted shy while performing the skit, but I was proud of them. All day Tuesday and Wednesday I taught the whole day by myself. The boys in my class worked on projects for most of the day. They had to finish making their maps of San Pedro and then we went to the computer room, so they could make brochures on HIV and AIDS. Most of them have never used the program Microsoft Publisher, so I had to help them a lot. The students worked on their brochures for over an hour and when they were done I found out the printer wasn’t working. I felt bad that they couldn’t print their brochures, especially since they were really excited about them. We went back to the classroom and each student made a flyer about HIV on a piece of construction paper. The health teacher at Isla Bonita needed a piece of work from each student for parent day on Friday.

After school, we walked back to Pedro’s and got ready for a birthday party that we were invited to. The party was for the dean of the Belize community college’s two- year-old son. There was a lot of food and loud music. I love all of the Belizean activities we do everyday. It’s been hard to blog because I am so busy every day and the internet doesn’t work very well at Pedro’s.

Teacher Jeanne

Monday:

First day of school was a success! I arrived at school at 8:00 this morning and school started at 8:30. Around 9:00 there was an assembly and all of the students gathered in the courtyard to say Our Father and sing the national anthem. After the assembly, I walked into my classroom and all of my students said “good morning Miss Jeanne.” That was the only time they called me “Miss Jeanne.” For the rest of the day I am “Miss.” Around 9:30, the regular teachers were still nowhere to be found, so I figured they decided that I would be full time teaching right from the start. All nine of the boys in my class are very rambunctious and loud. They told me that the principal had to move their class to a room downstairs because they disturbed the other classes. Even though I didn’t really have any written lesson plans, I had some ideas of what to do with the students. At first I just talked to the boys, learned their names, and worked o

n building a relationship with each of them. I told them they could ask me any question they wanted to. The first question I was asked was “Where are your parents right now and what are they doing?” I asked the boys if they had any tips for me that I could use during my stay in Belize. They warned me that all of Belize is haunted, especially the high school. Every night, a woman in a white dress bleeds from her eyes and haunts the high school. Also, there are a lot of ghosts in Belize, so I better be careful. Something else I found interesting was that a couple of the boys in my class worship the devil. They wanted to know if I worshiped the devil and if I wanted to become an angel or a devil when I die.

The students had projects that were due today, so I had them present their posters. One group constructed a volcano and made it erupt outside. Other groups had posters on earthquakes, hurricanes, and tsunamis. Basically, the classroom has no school supplies in it. Later on in the day, the boys had to draw a map of San Pedro. They told me they had to go buy the poster board, so I figured they were just going to buy it at the school office. They ran out of the classroom and when I looked at the window I saw them running down the street. The boys actually went to a store down the street to go buy the poster board.

I taught a math lesson on ratios and had each student create their own diagrams to show two ratios. Each boy came up to the white board to share their diagrams. The boys used vampires, devils, devil stars, zombies, and skulls in their ratios. I put up a picture of one boy comparing skulls to zombies.

I took my class up to the computer room for a while and they practiced typing. A boy in my class named Sam is obsessed with devils, so basically he just looked up pictures of devils the whole time. Even though Sam is the most misbehaved student in the class, he makes me laugh a lot. I love my nine boys and I already know it’s going to be tough to leave them at the end of the five weeks.

At lunch time, Natalie, Tess, Brianna, Anna, Elizabeth, and I went out to lunch at Judy’s Chinese Restaurant. The food was delicious, and we had a nice long hour of lunch. School is so much more intense in the U.S. and it is so much more relaxed here.

The last lesson I taught was on the ABCD of prevention. A= abstain B= be faithful C= condomise D= delay. We also talked about STDs. I felt completely comfortable talking to these boys about sex and the prevention of AIDS and STDs. They asked me a lot of questions, and of course Sam asked me if I liked sex. The students like to joke around with me, but they ask me serious questions about the topic too. AIDS is a big problem in Belize, so I felt really passionate about teaching the boys about prevention.

I spent the whole day teaching by myself, and I really enjoyed every minute of it. The walk home after school was beautiful. We walked on the beach and soaked up the sun. What a wonderful life.

Lights Out

On Sunday, I found out what happens when a whole country forgets to pay the electric bill. But really though, the power in all of Belize was out from 3:00 p.m. until 9:00 p.m. For the first few hours, none of us were worried about it, especially since it was still light outside. Actually, it was really fun because Anna, Natalie, Keri, and I hung out, acted very silly, and made up a song about the fertilization of plants. Since we didn’t have Internet, I went to Master Jeans to ask her what I should teach my students tomorrow about the fertilization of plants. Master Jeans is a scientist, so she taught me all about the topic. We were supposed to go to a jam sesh on the beach, but it turned into a bummer sesh because the power was

out. Anyway, the five of us got hungry for dinner, so we decided to go for a short walk and get some food. It was cloudy and windy outside, and it looked like a storm was brewing. It was strange to walk through town, everything was dark and closed, but no one appeared to be scared about the situation. We searched for food, and finally found this place where a Belizean woman was cooking up a storm. She made the girls some pancake creation. While we were waiting for the food, we talked to some guy that was vacationing on the island. He gave us some advice and told us to be careful of certain parts of the island tonight. When the food was done, we began our adventure to the market to get some water and then back to Pedro’s. The walk quickly became scary. A few of us had small flashlights, and the light from the golf carts helped a little (oh yeah, basically people only drive golf carts, and there are hardly any cars h

ere). Our walk turned into a jog and when we reached the market we saw a few guys arguing. My body felt so weird, and I felt like I was in a horror movie. One of the guys that worked at the market told us that it was extremely dangerous to be out right now, and when he said that I looked at Natalie and told her I was so scared. Natalie said “God, please bring comfort upon us.” About one minute after Natalie said that, two guys that were staying at our hostel came out of the market and said they would walk us back. We made it back to Pedro’s, and found some girls in Brittany’s room. Courtney texted her mom and asked her if she could try and find out what was going on and why there was no power in Belize. Her mom looked on the Internet and found out that people were messing with the power lines and cutting off the electricity to increase crime. We woke up Dr. C and she comforted us. Dr. C is such a wonderful p

erson and we are so lucky to have her with us on this trip. Around 9:00 p.m. the power turned back on and I felt so relieved. I was exhausted from being so scared for those couple of hours, so I listened to music and talked to Natalie before falling asleep.

Sunday morning before all of the power went out, Anna, Natalie, Keri, and I went to church at Living Word Church. Church was definitely in Belize time because it lasted for 2 hours and 15 minutes. The whole first hour w

as singing, and the second hour a pastor talked about spousal abuse. At home, every once and a while I go to Port City Community Church and the church here played a lot of the same songs. The music was similar because it was very lively and fun. My favorite part of church was when everyone sang happy birthday to one of the young girls that sings in the front of church every Sunday. Also, Port City had a dating series during overflow, and it was interesting how both churches were talking about relationships.

The pastor went into depth about spousal abuse, and I felt like I was sitting in a class, rather than in a church. He used a power-point while discussing the topic and after 20 slides I was done with church time. I already knew a lot of the information that was on the slides, but people that have a less formal education in Belize, probably don’t know a lot about the subject, or what to do if they are in an abusive relationship. Even though church was long, I enjoyed the experience and it was cool to see how similar it was to Port City.

Follow the Music

Saturday was a relaxing day. Around 11 in the morning, the whole group walked into town to the community center to eat lunch at a fundraiser for the high school teachers. Belizeans don’t really understand what it means to be a vegetarian, but the other girls that are vegetarian and I are always able to find something good to eat. After lunch, Natalie, Anna, and I walked around for a little and then spent a few hours on the beach. I love how there are no huge hotels on the island. There are some beautiful hotels in the area, and one of my favorites is one that consists of a bunch of huts right on the beach. While we were sitting on the sand, we saw a wedding and a parade. There are always so many wonderful activities going on at the beach.

Children are always trying to sell us things like jewelry and other random trinkets. The children walk up and down the beach, and they can even walk into restaurants and come up to you while you are eating. Sometimes, three boys will come up to me at once and ask me to buy something from each of them. When we were at dinner, the boys went up to Natalie and just put a necklace on her and told her she looked beautiful. After she bargained a little, she bought the necklace. Once I get to know my students at Isla Bonita, I’m sure I will see them around the island selling things, or working at different places. It is interesting to see how life is so different for my students here than it is for my students at home in Wilmington.

Brittany and I went out for dinner at a restaurant that had a sign on it claiming that it had great vegetarian food. We sat outside, looked at the menu and didn’t really understand anything on it. The waiter told us that he had a really tasty vegetarian dish that he would give us, so I decided to take a risk and go with what the waiter suggested. When we got our food, I had no idea what was on the plate, but took a bite and it tasted delicious. Some of the food just looked like brown mush, and there was some kind of salad, and things that looked like donuts.

After dinner, we met up with everyone at Wet Willy’s. Wet Willy’s is one of the coolest restaurants in San Pedro, because it is located at the end of a dock. When you are inside the restaurant, you can see the ocean water in between the wooden planks that make up the floor. There was a band that played some excellent blues music. Something made this band very special and that was the 15-year-old boy that played the guitar. The other three members of the band are probably around 50 or 60 years old. The young boy’s family never had enough money to send him to school. Here on the island, every family has to pay for their children to go to school. The three older men helped the young boy, named Derek raise money for him to stay in school throughout his life. Also, they taught him how to play music, and when Derek was 12 years old he started playing with the band at bars. People on the island have come together to raise money to send Derek to a summer music program at Berkley College in Boston. They hope that the college will be impressed with his talent and give him a scholarship to go to college there. Almost 10,000 dollars have been raised for Derek, so hopefully he will be off to Berkley in June.

The Legends of Belize

Today was a BIG day! After Natalie and I woke up and went for a short run on the beach, we quickly got ready and put on our teacher clothes. We met up with the Isla Bonita girls at a restaurant on the beach called Estel's and ate a big piece of watermelon. After breakfast, we walked to the elementary school. The principal assigned each of us to a classroom. I was put into a sixth grade class, which I was extremely excited about. When I walked into the small classroom, I found out that I would be teaching an all boys class (10 boys) and working with three different teachers. All of the boys were really funny and I have a feeling I will be laughing a lot in that classroom. After the boys told me their names, the whole school went outside and had a short assembly, so the student teachers could introduce themselves to the children. The students in Belize are very respectful and I couldn't believe how well behaved they were during the assembly. The students went back into their classrooms, and when I walked in all of the boys said "hello Miss Jeanne!" My partnership teachers told me that I would be full time teaching on Monday. I will be teaching math, language arts, science, health, and social studies. In math I will be teaching percentages and ratios, in language arts the students will be writing a composition on San Pedro, and in science I will be teaching the germination and fermentation of plants. The best part of my student teaching here in Belize will probably be my sex education lessons. I will be teaching a class of sixth grade boys about sex and on Monday we will be discussing STDs. I felt a little overwhelmed after my teachers told me that I would be teaching all of the subjects on Monday, but I am ready for the challenge! The three teachers that I will be working with are very interesting people (I will tell you more about them next week). When I was done getting all my work and books for school on Monday, I met up with the group at Estel's again for lunch. People on the island are starting to realize that we are here to teach (not for spring break), and they are giving us discounts at some restaurants.

After spending some time in the sun, Natalie and I went back up to our room. We ran into Walter, the guy at Pedro's Inn who can fix any problem you have in your room at the hostel. Well, our ceiling fan didn't work, so we asked Walter if he could fix it. He came into our room and after five minutes of being there, he broke the wall, all of the lights, and the fan was ripped out of the wall. I loved how Walter reacted to this situation, it was no big deal and he said "oh well, things happen." Belizeans are so chill and laid back. Anyway, about an hour later there was a working ceiling fan in our room, and I was very impressed.