"Second Star to the Right and Straight on Until Morning..."

I think that Alex Huestis most accurately described the Marshall Islands as a veritable "Neverland" (to be fair, she was describing Ejit, which she claims is actually run by children since there are so many on the small coral island). Where else would you see troupes of children parading down the street chanting tunes and marching in time with smiles on their faces? Where else would children be out at all hours playing in the street, unfazed by cars and wild dogs? Where else could you see kids using all types of things--from sticks to sheet metal--to play games? I have seen children playing militant games from atop huge shipping containers. I have seen kids recklessly climb up the side of the school building Spiderman style (spread eagle between two walls). Suffice to say, they are very brave. While I am sure that these observations are not only centralized in the RMI, the prevalence of children (the RMI is 46th in the world for birth rates at 30.7 births/1,000 population according to the CIA Factbook) and all the sailboats furthers the metaphor.

My life here has been centered around children. While I do hang out with other ribelles on the weekend and play soccer with Fijians on Mondays and Wednesdays, the main focus of my week is on my students (who I have started to refer to as "my children"...please don't let that make you nervous mom). Teaching has required more out of me than I expected. Since the Ministry of Education only provides guidelines, teachers are expected to come up with their own curriculum that meets those standards. This puts the onus of responsibility on the teachers to keep their students engaged, entertained, and learning (to be fair, I know that this is always the responsibility of teachers everywhere but it seems exacerbated here as a result of the lack of standardized curriculum). Being an English major, and somewhat freakishly obesessed with grammar, I do not find creating lessons that difficult for the grammar and writing classes. It is difficult to make grammar entertaining, but because of the competitive system I have set up in my classes, my students are almost always engaged. Reading, however, has really been a challenge. I am someone who from an early age has loved to read. Unfortunately, that zeal is not necessarily present in my students. It is hard to teach reading skills (let alone in another language) when those skills have come so naturally to me for such a long time. It becomes even more difficult when the texts are at a low reading level. Thus, my reading classes have required me to revert to a younger mindset. To help my students understand different reading techniques, I have relied heavily on drawing. This week my reading class focused on making comics as a means to understand main ideas and supporting details in stories. On Monday, I tried to explain to my students the concept of main ideas and supporting details by using simple short stories that I created. I told them "If you were going to retell this story in one sentence, what would you say?" A few of them understood the idea, but I could tell that it went over most of my students' heads. The next day I explained to them the art of the comic. I drew comics on the board and then erased all of the "supporting details" from the image so that what was left was only the main character and whatever action he or she was doing. My students seemed to understand this much better. We then spent the rest of the week writing stories and making comics out of them by picking out the main ideas from some of the stories that the students wrote. The end product was 60 beautiful comics, and some (hopefully) well educated kids.

Ideas like this one, however, do not come easily. I knew that I wanted to do something with comics before I came here and it clicked when I was trying to think of a way to teach the abstract concepts of main idea and supporting details. I have found that it takes a bit of childlike thinking to educate one. I think this is a lesson that is frequently forgotten.

Outside of the classroom, my life is becoming more child-centered as well. Outside of playing hacky-sac with my male students and volleyball with my female students, I was fortunate enough to teach all of my students my favorite childhood game from elementary school called "bullrush." It works exactly like the game "sharks and minos" except the players are running instead of swimming. Basically, all of the players line up on one side of a field. One player, who starts off as the "bull," counts down, "One, two, three, BULLRUSH," and all of the players standing in line run across the field. The goal is to get across the field without being touched by the "bull." If a player does happen to get tagged, that player joins the original "bull" and attempts to tag other players. The players who are running are considered safe from tagging once they have successfully crossed to the other side of the field. The winner is the last person to be tagged. It was a delight to play the game again after having not played it for years. The students seemed to really enjoy it as well.

The Marshallese children are incredibly innovative themselves. There are two games I have seen them play countless times that I have never seen anywhere else. One is similar to dodgeball. Everyone playing gets into a clump in between two players, one of whom has the ball. That player hurls the ball at the crowd and everyone in the middle tries to get out of the way without being hit. The player on the other side attempts to catch/recover the ball as quickly as possible so as to keep the rally between the two throwers continuous. If someone besides the two throwers catches the ball, the thrower is switched out and the game continues. The other game is a traditional Marshallese game that is a similar to football. There are two teams, and one small ball (the size of a hacky-sac; a small, sapling coconut is usually used). At the beginning of the game, the team with the ball huddles together facing the opposite team on the other side of the field. They all have their hands behind their back in order to ensure that the other team does not know who has the ball. Then, a call is raised and the kids rush across the field, still with their hands behind their back. The defending team tackles all of the players in an attempt to find out who has the ball. The offensive team wins if the player who is holding the ball makes it across the field. It is fairly brutal to watch at times, since the kids can be ruthless, but highly entertaining.

Mandy and I are also trying to make our Saturday field clean up a regular event. The students clean for a little while but it gives us more of an opportunity to hang out with our kids outside of the classroom/school hours. We bring a soccer ball, frisbee, and volleyball and play with the kids for a few hours. It is a great way to get to know them.

I think all of these interactions, in the classroom and outside of the classroom, have forced me to become a child again myself. While my sense of responsibility has become heightened as a result of...you know...having a job, I feel like my job requires me to find Neverland myself to ensure that the students and I have fun. When I first decided to come to the Marshall Islands, I had no interest teaching any age group besides high schoolers. Now that I am here, I am ecstatic that teach the level that I do. The kids are able to engage in higher level thinking but are still on the cusp of being young children who like to play simple games and roll around on the floor like toddlers. More and more I feel like teaching was the perfect choice for me outside of college. I will not lie and say that it has not had its ups and downs (it is difficult to come up with new things to teach every week) but I have always been someone who claimed to have "Peter Pan syndrome" in that I never wanted to grow up (please refrain from all Michael Jackson references, God rest his soul). After the graduation ball dropped, this fear became even more present to me. But here in the RMI, a land overrun with wonderful, fun loving kids, it seems that time as stopped, and the one can in fact stay young a little longer.

Next week Monday (October 18) I will be turning 22. I think that the RMI is the perfect place to step into full adulthood.

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While not going along with the theme I also wanted to mention that Fiji day was celebrated on Saturday here in the RMI. I was told that there are around 35 Fijian families in Majuro and it seems like all of them were all all of the programming throughout the day. The day started with field events on the MMS/MIHS field and ended with a huge Fijian feast in the Melele Room in MIR. The feast included Fijian dancing, music, and kava, a traditional Fijian drink. It was a great time!

Also, a big kommol (thank you) to the Doyle family for sending the Bungalow tins full of Halloween candy! We appreciate it very much.

Bar lo kom,

Andrew