Quarter 2, Week 1

This week was fairly low key after a week of multiple birthday celebrations and end of the term exams. As I wrote in the blog last week, I wanted to start this term by giving my students some study and thinking skills. In my reading class on Tuesday (we reviewed the final on monday), I instructed my students on three different ways to study - memorization through repetition, notecards, and self quizzing. I also told them that there would be a quiz the next day on describing one of these methods and that I highly encouraged them to use at least one of the methods to help them study. The next day, many of my students came into the classroom with notecards made from the night before and almost everyone passed the test. Unfortunately, these study skills did not seem to carry over for most of my students for our grammar test at the end of the week (though I did see one or two students using notecards), so I guess I need to constant reinforce the use of the notecards.

Wednesday, after the quiz, I gave my students seven questions to respond to: Why is the sky blue? Why do mosquitoes bite? What makes the waves? Why do certain fruits (pandanas, apples, oranges…) grow on trees? How did dogs get in the RMI? Why do people speak different languages? Do you think the Bikini bombing was “for the good of mankind”? I knew the answer to some of these questions (the moon creates the waves, the sky is blue because of the ocean, dogs got to the RMI on the boats of European invaders) and I was able to fake my way through the others (natural selection for the plants question, the development of language as a necessity as humanoid groups moved across the world) but the real purpose of the questions was the get the students to think outside of the realm they usually did. These were questions that the students, I was sure, had never really thought about. It was my hope that the students would stretch their minds attempting to come up with answers. The project met with little success. The students did not do the assignment for the most part so I had to give class time on Thursday to do the work. When I collected the work and looked at the answers I saw that many of the students simply stated that "God made it that way" or that "because its good that way." As a Christian myself, I saw that I would need to explain that the belief in God does exclude the rationale of science and that many scientists are religious people themselves. Some of the students did think cleverly. Some tried to explain that the movement of fish or of boats in the water created all of the waves. I was also surprised to find that not all of the students believed that the Bikini bomb tests were a bad thing. The next day, I progressed through the questions and was surprised that I was able to explain such complex concepts simply enough for my students to understand them. I was a bit disheartened to learn, however, that my students thought that the moon was larger than the Earth and that the Earth rotated around the moon. In a place where the two greatest resources were the sky and the water, I was shocked to find out that the students did not even know basic scientific concepts about either. I guess that is a testament to the usefulness of practical science (like understanding the winds or where certain fish dwell) and the superfluousness of hard science to a people so firmly rooted in their native culture. When it came to discussing the Bikini bomb testing, I did my best to explain the idea of every situation having two sides. We discussed the reasons that the Americans and the Marshallese thought that the testing were a good thing at the time, but also discussed the negative consequences. We did not have much time to talk about the issue before the end of class, so I hope to bring up the topic again in a more constructive manner. Overall, I was happy to provide the students with knowledge of things that they had never heard of (like Darwinism) and discuss with them some things they had thought about before, but I was left troubled by the inability of most students to think outside of the box and come up with answers themselves.

In grammar class, we learned about interjections and conjunctions this week. I taught the students a variety of interjections, including "bangarang," an interjection made famous by the 1991 Steven Spielberg film Hook starting Robin Williams (it was used by the Lost Boys whenever something good happened). My students liked it so much that they have already started using it when they answer questions correctly in class. As I said before, the students did not do well on their quiz this week. It was the first time that I had used a matching format on an exam and since the kids had used it before in other classes I figured they would do well, especially since the bulk of the quiz was based on matching interjections with emotions. I will have to remember to test out formats before using them in assessments. In lighter news, my parents sent me BBC's Planet Earth and Life for my birthday. They also sent me the entire collection of School House Rock videos. Grammar Rock is my favorite, and I look forward to using them, and all of the videos in class. Thanks mom and dad!

I also learned this week in school, through journal entries, that many of the kids here do not believe in celebrating Halloween for religious reasons. Mandy and I had planned on having some kind of Halloween party for our students, but now we have decided against it. While some of the students said they would dress up, many of them said that it was a bad holiday. I believe that the volunteers, the other ribelles, and myself will find some other way to celebrate.

Outside of class, this week was lacking. I got hurt playing soccer a few weeks ago (because of a fairly grim scratch, I now know why shin guards are so necessary in the sport) so I have not been as active, but hope to spice up this week by regularly going to gospel choir rehearsals after school at MIHS.

That is all for now,

Bar lo kom,

(and please, somebody, send some snow?)

Andrew