Quarter 3: "O brave new year that has such interns in't!"

It is hard to believe that the school year and my time in the Marshall Islands is more than halfway over. We were told during our orientation at Dartmouth that volunteers typically start feeling most comfortable after winter break--they finally feel like they have the hang of things. The break ended and I was able to get my class back into motion in a short amount of time. I can speak a bit of Marshallese and can have pretty basic conversations. I have a myriad of friends and contacts around the island. I have even become a "regular" at a sandwich shop and at the Marshall Islands Resort. Still, it feels like I just got here. At the advent of the new year, Professor Garrod and undergrads from Dartmouth arrived for the winter term (3 months) and I am seen as a resource to these new comers. Sometimes it takes people from outside of a situation to show how much a situation has changed you. I feel that I have learned a lot in a short amount of time here and am very proud of my experience thus far.

Professor Garrod brought five people to the RMI with him: three undergraduates--Rosa Van Wie '11, John Around Him '11, and Kamil Adamczewski '11 --the daughter of one of the teachers in the Education department--Kestrel Coon--and one student who graduated with me--Dan Moore '10. I was very much looking forward to their arrival. Since I am the only Dartmouth volunteer in Majuro, my experience has always been more World Teach centered. With their arrival, the dorm space became dominated by the Big Green. They all live in a trailer next door and so I get to see them all fairly. All of these new comers are teaching with a Marshallese teacher except for Dan, who is already certified. Rosa is teaching 3rd grade at Delap Elementary, which is probably the best public elementary school in Majuro. Kestrel is helping Alex Huestis on Ejit with her 2nd graders. The boys are all teaching at MIHS. Dan has taken over Hannah's classes (she decided to not return after Christmas break) and John and Kamil will be teaching English and Math, respectively. I am extremely to have Dan around. We have always been pretty good friends at Dartmouth and, in fact, lived on the same freshman floor. I have also enjoyed getting to go the other volunteers as well, none of whom I knew before. I have started going to the Wellness Center (a diabetes care center by the hospital) gym with Kestrel and Rosa for example. Rosa has also joined Mandy and my card playing and movie nights. This past weekend, Anna drove Garrod et al, Alex, Mandy, Joanna, Eric, and I up to Laura beach where we spent the day. It was extremely relaxing and fun to spend time all together.

I was excited for the arrival of Professor Garrod and the interns (as I will refer to them collectively) because for the last 6 or so years Garrod has come here he has put on a Shakespeare production at MIHS. This year the play is "The Tempest" (from which came the inspiration for this week's blog title). He told me before coming that he wanted me to be involved in the play because of my previous perforative experience. From the moment he arrived Professor kicked things into gear. Garrod arrived on Saturday, New Years Day. School started on Monday. Auditions for this play were on Tuesday. I was extremely impressed by Garrod's ability to get the kids to jump out of their shells and act. Many of the students were very good at reading the lines and acting them out on the spot. I am extremely excited to watch the play develop. Garrod has cast me as Ariel, Prospero's subordinate magical spirit (Prospero is the lead of the play). He cast me and another Dartmouth volunteer, who is here on his third year--Jon Marable--in the play to be an example of dedication, timeliness, and expressiveness for the other students. The challenge for us lies in the fact that 80% of the play is going to be delivered in Marshallese. I am happy to have an opportunity to learn more Marshallese, but it will definitely be difficult to learn lines! Rehearsals have been everyday so far, but as we start doing more specific scene work, the time commitment will be cut down.

Starting school after the break was extremely difficult. The students didn't want to be there. I was not ready to come back. So, to appease both parties, we watched A LOT of Disney movies the first week. Three were for fun but the fourth, "Wall-E," I used to review literary elements and parts of a story. It was the perfect choice because there are few spoken words in the story. The students really liked it. This week, I started up reading groups again. It was the first time I was actually leading guided reading and while there were some awkward moments, I think it went over well. I realized that I was underestimating the reading ability of some of my students, so I will need to restructure groups. In grammar, since we have now covered all of the parts of speech, I made sure that my students knew their parts of speech well. I would write a sentence like, "Wow! This is a very long but beautiful sentence" and ask the students to identify the part of speech for each word. More than two-thirds of both of my classes passed the quiz at the end of the week with flying colors. This coming week I am focusing on subject-verb-objects again. The following week I am going to focus on all of the tenses again. This way, I can finally start talking about writing different types of sentences since they will have all of the pieces of basic syntax learned. My goal is to have the students writing a variety of grammatically correct sentences by the end of this quarter and short essays by the end of next quarter. The first five months went by quickly, so I better get moving!

Until next time,

Bar lo kom,

Andrew