Welcome to my blog on my year (July 2010 - June 2011) in the Marshall Islands! The Republic of the Marshall Islands is a Micronesian nation composed on 29 coral atolls and 5 islands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean just west of the International Date Line and just north of the Equator. I am here on the Dartmouth Volunteer Teaching Program which you can find out more about at this link: www.dartmouthrmi.com. I am staying in the capital, Majuro, and am teaching two sections of 7th grade English Grammar/Writing and English Reading at Majuro Middle School (MMS). I am living in dorms on the Marshall Islands High School (MIHS) campus, where MMS is located. If you have any other questions please feel free to email me at l.andrew.rayner@gmail.com, and thanks for visiting my blog. I update on Sundays as regularly as electricity/internet availability permits.

Tuesday, December 21, 2010

New Beginnings

This post will be short since I am paying for internet now/using other peoples' computers. I will hopefully have my computer back in my hands by the new year. The ribelle, Randy Sylvester, at Majuro Computer Services said that he can upgrade my hard drive and fix it for a fraction of the cost that Apple would serve me with (not to mention the shipping back to America) so I am thankful for that. This unfortunate occurrence has turned into an opportunity of sorts.

The term finally ended this past week. I spent the first three days reviewing 10 weeks of grammar material. I decided to not have a reading final since I lost my grades and I did not feel up to making the students prepare something in such a sort time. While reading groups helped me teach reading techniques, it did not promote any kind of formal examination and since the teachers at the school truncated the term by two days, I decided that my gift to my kids would be no reading final. Suffice to say, they were happy with the gift. Instead, we spent the last week teaching "All I Want for Christmas is You" by Mariah Carey and "I'll Be Home for Christmas." Both were extremely endearing to hear. Mandy taught both her students and mine how to sign "I'll Be Home for Christmas" and I taught the music. Our goal was to record the students doing both, but by the end of the week, the students wanted to go home more than be on youtube. It was a disappointment to Mandy and I, but we were also happy to be free of obligations. Our plans to "have it snow in the RMI" (read: have our students close their eyes and then throw really cold water balloons at them to start a water balloon fight) fell through for the same reason. Luckily, there is still snow in the US in January (though, for some reason, our students refused to believe this fact). After the test was over, I taught my students to make snowflakes which they loved. My classroom is now decorated completely by my students and I am very proud of that fact.

I have yet to grade the finals since I have been enjoying the break but I will be sure to let you know the stats when I do. Break has allowed me to hang out with the World Teach volunteers who have come in and talk about experiences in different parts of the RMI. Kristin Dewey and Jenna Cunningham have also come in, but they have been on Ejit with Justin and Alex and have not come to Majuro to spend any real time yet. I look forward to sharing experiences with them as well. Besides hanging out and talking, I have not done much with my break. I have been able to eat at some places that I have never been to and have been reading a lot but because I do not have my computer, my attempt to start my job search or start recording music for my new MMS acapella group or getting better at the guitar have all been stunted. Hopefully I will soon find something to occupy my time. Until then, I do like the break for not having to teach (on Sunday evening I had a revelation that I did not have to go to school on Monday and literally jumped for joy). The students needed the break but I think I might have needed it even more. I look forward to starting the new year with refreshed energy. I also think it will be great to have Professor Garrod, Dan Moore '10, and the Dartmouth undergrads coming on the study abroad program through the Education Department here in the Marshalls. They will be new to the island (well, with the exception of Garrod) and will need showing around and I plan on filling that role to the fullest.

Last Thrusday, The de Brueys family came to the RMI to pay their final respects to their son James. The family was greeted by many ribelles and Marshallese people at the airport. On Friday, the family went to the island where James was stationed to meet the Marshallese people that so loved James there. They said that they were overwhelmed by the response and kindness of the people here. On Thursday, there was a formal service behind MIR for all of the deceased followed by a dinner for the de Brueys family and the volunteers of Dartmouth and World Teach at Wallaby Downs, the Australian Navy outpost in the RMI. Surrounded by Anna and a few other volunteers I toasted that this dinner mark the end of bad news for all of us in this year and that it be the start of new wonders in the new year. I hope this wish holds true.

As a final note, a dear friend that I made in the RMI has left the island for good. Michael Honeth, a ribelle who has been here for a few years working for the EPA, was one of the first people to reach out to the other volunteers and I. He was extremely generous and friendly--in the true Marshallese spirit--and he will truly be missed. I hope he goes on to have many great adventures wherever life takes him.

My next post will be after Christmas, so I hope you all have incredibly merry holidays surrounded by those you love. Know that we are all thinking of you, missing you, and wishing we were home for Christmas from the Pacific.

Bar lo kom,

Andrew

Sunday, December 12, 2010

When It Rains, It Pours

After only 5 months, my Macbook Pro has gotten a virus (a very rare thing to happen indeed) and has died. I am sending it back to the US since it is still insured but as a result my efforts to blog and email regularly will be stymied by this occurrence. The blog will also not feature pictures until I get my computer back (though luckily, I have yet to delete any of my RMI pictures from my camera, which was very fortuitous of me). I will do my best to keep up the same Sunday posting schedule.

This past week, the memorial service was held for James and the other passengers of the boat that was capsized at sea. It was a beautiful service. There is nothing like a funeral on the lagoon beach at sunset to remind you of how beautiful life is and that we should do our best to live it fully while we can. I only knew James for a short amount of time, but he was full of life, and I think that is what he would want all of us to do. There were not many differences in the service that I could understand (since it was mostly in Marshallese) except for the fact that the speakers were the heads of each clan of people present. There is also the act of pouring white rocks over the grave as a means of "wiping the slate clean." I need to find out more about the service itself to understand the actions fully, but I was not able to at the time because those who I would have asked were bereft at the time.

Otherwise, school is coming to an end. The teachers at MMS decided to end school this coming Friday instead of next week Tuesday. This good because I get two full weeks off. However, it is bad because I now have three days to review ten weeks of material since finals are Thursday and Friday.

In other news, since the holiday season is approaching, all of the volunteers from World Teach and Dartmouth have been trickling back to the island. The Bungalow has a lot more faces now, which is good after the departure of Hannah and Bill. The first group of Dartmouth volunteers--Kristen and Jenna--will be coming back on Friday and I am extremely excited to see them.


That is all for now. Let's hope the rest of the year brings better tidings!

Bar lo kom,

Andrew

PS: With the current conference on climate change, there has been a resurgence of talk about the rising ocean levels and how it will affect island nations like the RMI in the future. This article will give you some sense of the problem. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101206/ap_on_sc/climate_disappearing_nations

Monday, December 6, 2010

Winners, Losers, and Losses




The past week has been a dark one. We were told by our director and my many of the other permapelles (premanent+ripelles, a term supposedly coined by last year's DVTP volunteers) that the mood of the island changes come December. People are excited for the holiday season and as a result, things being to get a bit wild. This month has started with bad tidings and challenges already.

At the beginning of the term, Mandy and I were asked to put on a Spelling Bee for the 7th grade. We were told by the staff at MMS that previous volunteers had organized a Spelling Bee before and that they wanted us to do it again. Neither Mandy nor I were enthusiastic about the prospect. We never really enjoyed Spelling Bees ourselves (I am a terrible speller, if this blog has given you any indication). We were also extremely uncomfortable and confused about having a spelling contest in English when we felt the students should be celebrating their own language through the contest. Still, we dutifully did what we were told. The planning itself was stressful. Mandy was busy with many other projects that she has started at MMS and so while I went to her for council ever step of the way (to make sure, for example, the words chosen were appropriate, etc) I took on the bulk of the work and responsibility for the event, creating rules, managing lists, and passing out appropriate materials. When I finally got the process started and under control, I was approached by a staff member from the 8th grade who inquired as to why I did not include the 8th grade in the Spelling Bee. I had personally assumed that the teachers for the 8th grade were going to arrange their own Bee, since Mandy and I are only the chairs for the 7th grade English Department, but in the states all of the middle school classes competed against one another (in my experience), so I conceded to the teacher's argument and included the 8th grade. This caused a fuss in and of itself. Some of the 8th grade teachers thought it was unfair that the 7th graders had more time to look at the words. Some of the 7th grade teachers thought it was unfair that the 8th grade was included in the contest when it was more likely that they would win. Teachers from both sides felt that some of the words Mandy and I had chosen were unfair because the students had never seen them before. Luckily in the midst of all of the bickering, one outspoken teacher sided with Mandy and I and argued that we were all underestimating the students and that the words should be more difficult. Mandy has suggested that we make the spelling list mostly from Dolch sight words (which are words that one should be able to read by sight and not necessarily phonetic decoding at different stages from pre-K to 3rd grade) and so she and I agreed that some of the most basic words were in fact too easy. To try to appease the masses, I held a review session for any contestant in the 7th or 8th grade who wanted to come and hear the pronunciation for the words on the list in an effort to aid them with spelling. At this meeting, I found out that the students were able to spell ALL of the words on the list already. They had studied and memorized even the most difficult words (including "arachnophobia") from rote memorization. The confident teacher was correct. Consequently, a few days before the contest, it was suggested that Mandy and I supplement the list with words that were not originally on the list. We were also told that each student should be given a limited amount of time to spell the word in the hopes of keeping the contest to a certain specified length. The night before the contest, Mandy and I added a variety of moderate to challenging words to the list. This ending up causing problems the next day. The first time that we used a word off of the list and the student was unable to spell the word, her parent, who was the head of the PTA, complained that the word had not been on the list and that we needed to make sure to use the words that had been given to the student previously before we used new words. While Mandy and I understood his argument, the decision to add words to the list was made by all the teachers, and additionally Mandy and I had already mixed in new words with the old ones. For the rest of the contest, Mandy and I had to try to remember which words were from the first list and ask those words first. After that point, the contest went flawlessly. The students spelled an impressive number of words and in the end, three girls were the finalists: two girls from 7th grade took third and second place and an 8th grader took first. I was extremely proud of their efforts and was glad to be done with the contest. However, as soon as I stepped off stage, I was given a complaint from one of the teachers who said that I had told her student she spelled the word "variable" wrong when she had spelled it correctly. Mandy nor I remembered making such a mistake and we also had a Marshallese teacher helping us incase accents became an impediment to understanding spellings. We all agreed that she had spelled the word wrong. After suggesting a myriad of "solutions" to the problem (such as re-doing the contest), I explained to the complaining teacher that we did the best we could and that any "solution" would be unfair. I waked away extremely upset that there had been so many complaints when Mandy and I had done our best with something we had never done before and with which we had no assistance. As soon as I left that conversation, the parent of the girl who had been "unfairly" removed from the contest came up to me and also complained virulently. At this point I was fed up and really discouraged. I am sure that I came off to the mother as snappy but I promptly apologized, realizing that no mother would want to see her child lose, especially not unfairly. After that, the rest of the day went off without much of a hitch. The math department came up with a contest where groups of students would be given a math question and would have to grab the same number of people on their team as the answer to the question. The entire school had been broken up into color teams similar to the ones used in my classroom. My team, of course, did the worst, but it was all good fun and I hope that we can catch up during some of the other school-wide events.

To add on to this sad news, because of drama and complications inside the Bungalow, Bill has decided to move out. Hannah is heading home for Christmas and to see her father who is currently ill and she is fairly resolute that she will not be coming back. It is sad that our Bungalow family will soon be cut down to three.

Finally, and most sadly, the boat carrying the missing World Teach volunteer, James de Brueys, was found capsized this past Tuesday, 10 miles from where it had initially departed. A few days later the body of the youngest passenger, Anwel, was found and a day or so after that, Baby Kaiko, who was pregnant at the time, was also found. The bodies of James and his host father, Kiotak Abitlom Joream, have been lost at sea and the search was concluded this past weekend. The loss has been detrimental to the World Teach volunteers and directors here and my heart goes out to them. I only met James briefly when he came to visit Majuro for a weekend a month or so ago, but we immediately clicked on a few shared nerdy interests and I had just received a letter from him before the news struck. There will be a memorial service held for him tomorrow and his family should be coming in within the next week. As for what will happen as far as the World Teach program in the RMI or changes to protocol, I am not privy to that information. Please keep the family and the World Teach directors and volunteers in your prayers and warmest thoughts.

Two wholly positive things did happen this past week. Majuro had its first art show featuring ripelle and rimajol artists from around the atoll. I was asked to be in the show and display some photography but I was a bit apprehensive of my skills. While I feel bad for missing the opportunity, the event itself was absolutely amazing and I think there will be another event sometime next year, though it might me too late for me to participate. The second was that Mandy and I successfully jambo-ed (a jambo the Marshallese word for a leisurely, aimless stroll) from MIHS to MIR, which is the full extent of most of our operations on island. On the way we stopped at all the stores that we had yet to go into and scoped out potential Christmas gifts. The walk was around 4 or 5 miles and took us around 5 hours to complete with stops and lunch.

Hopefully this week will bring good tidings as we approach the break and Christmastime.

Bar lo kom,

Andrew