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.