The Week from Hell January 23rd

It actually started the week before this one. On Thursday Johnny was in and out of my class and he was copying work so I gave him a zero for that. Friday he skipped the last two periods. On Monday I knew I was going to have to get him in trouble. I was busy and forgot until mid-morning when one of the teachers came up to me and said, "One of your students is smoking outside." Johnny and Stevenson (another trouble kid) came around the corner at the next minute. I had them breath in my face. Stevenson did, and smelled like smoke. Johnny wouldn't even. One of the other teachers came by about that time and said he saw Johnny smoking so he took them to the office. A few minutes later Mr. Grant came in and said Johnny was being suspended. The next day he wasn't in school and the next day was an in school suspension where he worked all day.

The first couple days of the week the rest of the guys would sneak out of class and go hang out somewhere. I talked to them and it didn't help, as always. If you don't assign a punishment, they just don't care. Wednesday and I told them that every time I turn around that side of the room has almost no one in it. I said, "If you are gone, I'll write your name down and give you detention." They were a little better that day but still taking off so I gave them detention. Stevenson just took off and didn't do his detention. That's his standard thing. He seems to think that running from your punishment will get you out of it. Unfortunately, it does work sometimes.

Thursday we were doing reading and I look up and one of the smart kids is out playing with a basketball in the hall. I asked him if his work was done and he said yes. I asked him where it was and he said with the guys. "Are they copying your work?" "No, umm, I mean yes." I told him to never let people copy his work or I would count him off points. I found his work but several kids and already "finished" the assignment. I took the ones I knew were copied and told them they had a zero unless I saw them doing their reading. They didn't care. They started gambling with pocket change.

After lunch those same guys came back 30 minutes late. I knew they had left campus, which is a big no-no. I waited until the next day and sent five guys into the principals office. He told them if they did anything else they would be kicked out. They were good on Friday, but they have all heard that before. They'll probably be good for awhile. I sure hope so. Next week has to be better.

After that constant conflict all week I was so drained. To top it off our class had chapel on Friday. The kids did pretty good up front and I told two stories. They really liked the stories because they stayed quiet for them and paid attention. That never happens in chapel.

After chapel and saw some of the girls and invited them over to my place for Ramien. I cook up the Ramien and we sat around a talked for awhile. At first they talked in Marshallese but they switched to English and we had a good conversation. We talked about all kinds of things. Then we got out a deck of cards and played some games. We played a game I have never heard of but it was so funny. We were all yelling and laughing. The girls had a really good time and thanked me several times. I had a really good time and it was a very nice ending to a crazy week. It reminded me that I really do love my kids even though some of them make me want to get a baseball bat out and start hitting people sometimes.

It got me to thinking. I need to break through to these guys. I've made friends with the girls and they've responded really well. It's a lot harder to make friends with the guys. They just run around and push each other around all the time. They also make strange jokes that I don't get a lot. But if I could make friends with them maybe the class would go easier. That's my mission for this week.

January 16th, Good times and hard work

I'm really glad we got back to school. I have a purpose and I get to spend time with my students. I've made a few changes in my class from last semester. Some people complain about Marshallese and their lack of respect and stuff. There is some truth in it, but the bottom line is that a class is what the teacher makes it. When the class is out of control, I figure it is my fault and I need to change something. The kids have been talking a lot in my class and last semester I just called them out one at a time. It worked somewhat, but the class was never quiet. I decided I needed to make changes so I told everyone that this year they were going to be quiet for lectures and if they weren't I would assign laps to run. So far it has worked quiet well. They haven't had to run more than two laps except for one day. We got to the end of the day and they had done really well and we didn't have any laps. Then the last lecture a group of kids just wouldn't shut up. I kept saying something and adding laps and we got up to four. The other kids were mad because it was about 6 people who were being disruptive. We went outside and I made just the trouble kids run laps and I made it a little less so they would want to run it then instead of the whole class running the next day. It works really well with the girls who sit in the front; Sancha, Rubina, Nujin, Jasmine. They pay attention now. The girls who sit in the back don't care as much. The guys are in the middle, they don't talk as much as they used to.

Another change that I made right before break was reading. I was giving them books to read and they were suppose to write summaries on what they read for the day. They didn't do the reading, they just copied a few sentences from the book and made it look like they had read. I got a reading book and it has hard questions at the end of each story. For the most part, they do their reading. I think a few kids copy off others. I remember one day that every single person was quiet doing their reading. That is unheard of. I was just sitting back thinking, this is bliss.

I had them write a 2 page paper about their break and what they did. Then they were suppose to share it with the class in a speech. The paper went well, the speech not so much. The papers were kind of boring for a couple reasons. First, they just don't do much on break. They sleep and play basketball and watch TV. Second, when they do stuff they skip over it and don't share details. They don't really know how to write an interesting story. On top of that, they are embarrassed to tell the class the interesting stuff. The first day of speeches only three people got up and shared. I allowed them to read their stories. I told them if they told the story without reading it they would get bonus points. The second day one kid did that. It was the most interesting and the only one any of the kids paid attention to. I kept telling them to be quiet, but when the other students were up there I didn't want keep stopping the speech to tell the class to be quiet. They said, "We don't want to give a speech because the class doesn't listen and they talk." I said, "That's what I go through every day. Welcome to my world." I hope they realized how disrespectful it seems. They don't mean to be disrespectful. It never crosses their mind. Just like they think nothing of throwing trash on the ground or eating KoolAid.

On Monday I got out of class and I was bored. I knew I needed to go to Payless but didn't want to do it alone. A couple of my students were standing in the shade so I asked them if they wanted to go down to Payless with me. They didn't seem to interested because it's a little walk and they didn't have any money. I told them I would buy icecream for them and four girls were instantly on board. We walked over there taking our time talking and hanging out. I bought my food and then their icecream. We ate at some tables they have at Payless for just that purpose. While we were eating I asked one of them about her parents. Her dad is in Ebeye. He sends money for her cellphone and school and she talks to him on the phone sometimes. Her mom left when she was three. She is in Samoa now. Nujin said she doesn't have a mom which means they never talk and her mom isn't involved at all. I felt bad for her.

After we ate icecream we walked up to an electronics store that I didn't even know was there. We looked at the iPods and computers and cellphones. As with all kids that age, they love to listen to music all the time. They play music on their phones all the time. We walked back to the school and they helped me carry my food. They thanked me several times for the icecream. It meant a lot to me that they said thank you a bunch of times. A lot of kids here seem to take a lot for granted. When they are grateful it means a lot.

On Friday I got done with school and ate a big lunch. Then I walked over to laundry with some of the SMs. When I got back several of my students and one of the high school boys were hanging out in the guard shack. I went over and sat with them I talked to them on and off when they weren't talking in Marshallese. At one point I got pretty bored, but then they started to talking to me again and I'm really glad I stayed. The wind was nice and it felt good just to do nothing. I hung out for about an hour and a half. I've changed a lot being over here. I used to never do nothing for that long. I don't have the drive to go and do stuff as much as I used to. I'm content just to hang out. Island life is was slower and laid back. I understand my students much better than when I first got here. I like my old life of going to church, climbing 6 pitches Sabbath afternoon, doing something Saturday night. Going climbing on Sunday for another 6 pitches. Coming back and doing homework until late and crashing into bed. I used to be irritated by people who would sit in their dorm room all Sabbath afternoon. Now I'm content to do nothing all Sabbath afternoon. Here it is different because you just don't have the option of doing anything. I've adjusted to my environment. I will always look back with good memories to taking an hour and a half to go to Payless with my students and hanging out doing nothing with them. I'm glad I can do that. The thing that I admire about them is their focus on relationships and friends and I'm learning that from them.

Broken Toes and BandAids

Last Monday I decided to go fly my kite. I have been tying myself to a rock so that the powerful kite doesn't take me away. This time I wanted to do it in the water. I found a place where the wind was going along the shore. Everyone was being very lazy so I went out by myself. A bunch of kids came out of nowhere and one of them was a 7th grader from our school. They all wanted to help so I explained to him in English and he translated for the rest of them. They were a great help setting everything up. I launched it on the shore, which is rock. I didn't expect it to pull so hard because the wind was light so it pulled me down the shore a ways before I lost control and it crashed. It took me awhile to teach the kids how to flip the kite over so it would relaunch. (Supposedly there is a way to do it yourself, but I haven't figured it out yet.) I worked my way into deeper water and I really wanted to get on my board, but it was still shallow and I didn't want to run my board into something. I launched it and let it drag me through the water, it's called body dragging. It's a step to practice kite flying in the water before getting on a board. It was much easier than flying on the beach and my body offered just the right amount of drag. The kite fly amazingly without hardly a flutter. At one point a wave broke on my head and I went completely under but when I popped up it was still flying. I got pulled into a more shallow area and so I was walking on the bottom with my flipflops. Of course everything is sharp and jagged around here in the water. Suddenly I took a step and found nothing beneath my feet. I still don't know how deep the hole was, but it was more than shoulder deep. I lifted my foot as the kite pulled me forward to try and find the next land. Suddenly a huge rock was right in front of me and my foot ran right into it. I lost my sandal and I knew I had scratched up my foot. I didn't think it was bad though. I found footing but tripped and the kite crashed. When I checked out my foot I found my second toe on my left foot was broken and curved over my big toe. The kids helped me recover my sandals and kite. I packed it away, threw it on my back and headed for the hospital. It was a short, albeit painful, walk over there. I was dripping water and blood all over the emergency room floor. It took them two hours to take a couple x-rays and and set my toe.

The next few days were very painful and all they would give me was ibuprofen and Tylenol. Typical Marshallese hospital. On Friday I had a follow up and they unwrapped up. I could move my toe so they said that it would be fine. They taped it to my other toes and told me I could take care of it now. If I ever break a toe again, I just do it all myself. There isn't much a doctor can do for you. They just tape it up.

Now that my toe is a little more mobile, I can walk a little better. Leadership has decided to encourage us to do things for the community Sabbath afternoons. I think it is great. We've been bored out of our heads Sabbath afternoons anyway. There is a huge list of stuff we can't do. Church people do nothing on Sabbaths. We are going to try and get some youth programs together and get people involved. Today we did BandAid clinic. I think I described it in an earlier post. Basically we sing songs to the kids and at the end we put bandaids on them. They love bandaids even if they aren't hurt. Kids in school where them on their faces all the time. This time Zac brought slingshots. I was worried that would go south, but it was ok. He had a bunch of paintballs. It turns out the kids love being shot at by paintballs. We used it in our skit of David and Goliath. At the end Zac handed out paintballs and it was a mob scene with them all trying to get some. Then they turned them on him and threw paint all over his legs. It was funny. I'm really glad we are spending time bonding with the locals. Sometimes it seems only a couple of us teachers are interested in connecting with students on a personal level. Hopefully everyone will get involved this semester.