Keeping busy
It’s been over a month since my last update, and I’m sorry for the long absence; I haven’t had much free time, or internet time, since school started on September 6. And I definitely have a lot to update on. But I also apologize if this post’s a little disorganized; I’m running on about two hours of sleep right now and am a bit fuzzy.
I’ll start with school. Like I said, we started on September 6–on the actual start day, miraculously (many schools started a week or more late). We even had an orientation day the week before to welcome the students back. As inefficient as things can be here sometimes, I have to say I was pretty proud of my school.
Classes have been going well. I feel much more prepared and in-charge than I did last year. My 7th graders have more discipline problems than last years’ class–they were angels last year–so my current challenge is coming up with an effective rewards system for positive behavior, completing homework, etc. On Friday I had to break up a fight between two girls (one had apparently torn a piece of paper out of the others’ notebook). It was the first time I’d had to do that. Luckily a couple other students also stepped in to help calm them down, which was great. And the class got a lot better after that, because I took them outside for a game of “sharks and minnows,” which was a busload of hilarious fun, even if I did nearly get trampled to death by the kids (I made myself the “base”–not a good idea!).
8th grade science is also going great. The complete lack of supplies and materials is a big challenge, especially as I’ve been trying to introduce the students to the scientific method; it’s hard to do interesting labs and experiments with no equipment to work with. It’s also slow-going. I don’t have a counterpart, and while my Chuukese and the kids’ English are good enough for us to effectively communicate most information, a lot still gets lost in translation, especially with vocabulary definitions, so I have to spend a lot more time covering each concept. It’s frustrating at times because I’d like to get a lot more in-depth on some topics, but the kids just don’t have any of the basic science skills or knowledge. Plus my hands-on, American approach to science is very different from what they’re used to from their other teachers–basically, sitting and listening to the teacher talk and occasionally copying down in their notes a paragraph that the teacher writes on the blackboard from the textbook, typically in English too advanced for them to understand. Getting them to relate science to the world around them has not been easy–although it’s been very rewarding to see them actually make those connections.
For the past couple weeks we’ve been covering ecosystems, food chains, and food webs. I’ve been working hard to emphasize the importance of how every organism in an ecosystem is connected; if you take one organism out of the chain or web, everything else changes too. From there I’m planning to move on to marine ecosystems, how tides work, and eventually to pollution and how human activities affect the ocean. Depending on how well the students do with all that, I’m really hoping to work in some kind of service-learning activities; doing beach clean-up, giving a presentation to the school or community about trash management, or something along those lines. The other nice thing about teaching science is that it allows for a lot of cross-curriculum tie-ins with English. Overall it’s been fun, and I’m looking forward to seeing what else I can do with it.
In other exciting news, the new group of incoming Trainees is arriving in Chuuk this afternoon. We’re getting 7 new volunteers, which will more than double the current size of PC Chuuk, which is a little overwhelming. All us current folks are looking forward to meeting and greeting our new friends. It’s crazy to think it’s been a whole year now since I was in that position myself, stepping off the plane to start my life here. How the time has flown!
Some less happy news is that I attended my first Chuukese funeral last week. Funerals are usually a very big deal in the culture, and while of course it’s a sad event, I was also interested to finally experience it for myself. An older woman from my neighborhood passed away; she was a prominent member of the community and the church, and also belonged to one of the largest and most prominent clans on the island, so the funeral was a pretty big deal. Because of school I actually only attended a small part of the week-long event, on the first night after the death. The family had the body laid out in their house for people to come through and pay their final respects. The family also provided food for all the visitors (because every kind of gathering here always includes food). After a couple speeches and prayers from family members and various church leaders, the rest of the night was dedicated to singing–singing to the deceased, as my host mom explained it. I only stayed for a couple hours, but the singing went on into the early hours of the morning–I could hear it from my bedroom, just a couple houses away. There was a lot of weeping and wailing of the demonstrative kind of which it’s often hard to tell how much is truly authentic grief, and how much is just show, as expected by the culture (not to disqualify the real underlying sadness, of course). In Chuukese culture, people rarely openly express their deeper emotions, except for anger. Sadness in particular is never shown; the few times I’ve seen students cry (not because of me, I promise!), their tears are always a big cause for embarrassment. With that in mind, I had to wonder how much of those big shows of grief are really some sort of catharsis–built on real sadness over the death, but also an opportunity to release some of that pent-up emotion that the culture doesn’t allow people to express elsewhere. It’s a theory, at least.
But the really meaningful part of the experience for me was watching some of my students, who were related to the woman who died, during the singing. Many of them–and some other people as well–were clearly very broken up, unable to sing, openly weeping and comforting each other. It was heartbreaking, but also something of a breakthrough moment for me to see the kids revealing such deep emotion, which is rarely ever glimpsed. It made me realize just how much I really love and care about my students–as frustrating as they can sometimes be–and about my community as a whole.
I’m afraid I can’t think of anything else worth sharing at the moment. I should have more, considering how long it’s been since my last update, but since school’s started life has fallen into a pretty normal routine, and there’s not much to say that I haven’t talked about before. Plus I’m exhausted and my brain has decided it’s pretty much done for the moment. So I hope you enjoy what I have and I promise I’ll try to be more regular with my updates in the future!
Hey Kirby say hi to your neightborhood for me.