Back in the Swing of Things

Sleep is something that I can’t seem to get enough of here on the island. Getting back into the routine of getting up at 6:15, to be at staff worship at 7:15, was pretty brutal after being able to sleep in as late as I wanted during break.

Outer island of Ahnt

On Sunday, I de-Christmased my classroom, rearranged the desks, and cleaned. I encountered quite a few spiders hiding among the glittery Christmas strands I had strung around the room. If you know me, I don’t do well with spiders. So my solution to dealing with the spiders, was to pull down on the strands from the ceiling, run away from them, then wait for the spiders to crawl out so I could kill them with my flip flops. It was quite effective!

Monday morning, I get to flag raising to find that I have a new student in my class. The family had just registered that morning so I was totally unprepared for another student. The boy’s name is Maximus and so far he’s been a pretty good student. Now I’m back up to 13 crazy 4-6 years olds in my classroom. On Wednesday, I decided to evaluate the students to see how well they know their numbers. I called up each student individually and asked them to count as high as they could. One of my boys, JT, did fine up to 10 but then paused.

“Alright JT, what comes after 10?”

“15! 18! 13! Eleventeen!”

I tried my hardest not to laugh and told him to go ahead and sit down.

View of the high school from my porch

Haylee has been finishing her reading and phonics work very quickly in class, so after she turned in her assignment, I asked her to come sit on my lap at my desk. I help up some easy words I had written on a piece of paper. Together we sounded out the letters and put the sounds together to create the words. It took a lot of sounding out, but we finished the list and I told her I was very proud of her and her parent would be too. Her face lit up and said, “Ms. C you think they’ll be proud?” “Of course they will be proud Haylee!” She slid off my lap and skipped back to her desk with a big smile on her face.

Our playground has recently acquired three teeter-totters. (As if the carousel wasn’t enough of a death trap already! There’s a reason those things were banned in so many states.) I’d say the teachers enjoy them almost as much as the children do! As our group waits to go somewhere, you will often times find a few SMs going up and down on them. Watching our children get on those contraptions however, is not fun. I’ve had several children fall off of them already, trying to get down without asking me for help.

All of us dread Parent-Teacher conferences. Not because we dread seeing the parents, but rather because we sit in our classrooms for hours alone because parents don’t come to see us! I had three out of thirteen parents come and talk to me. The only parents that come to these meetings are the ones whose child is doing well in my class. I learned from talking to some of the locals that if a parent knows that their child is not doing well in school, they don’t like to come to talk to the teacher because they are embarrassed. That really disappoints me because I really need to talk to some parents but they avoid me constantly!

I received my Christmas package from my sister and a surprise package from Joni this week! I was so excited! Thank you to everyone that has sent me packages and letters! They always bring a lot of joy to my day!

I have no new pictures this time, so the pictures that are up just show the beauty of Pohnpei. J