Today in one of my classes, I had my students just working on an assignment. I was working on grades while they were working. I’ve been posting grades so that I don’t have to keep a running tally of who has missing work. The students themselves can do that, I thought it would take some stress out of my job. I’m not sure whether it will or not. While I was working diligently on my grades, one of my students, Xiaofeng, came up and asked if she could ask me a question. I always laugh to myself about that, they just did, but I said sure. She then proceeded to not ask a direct question, she asked an indirect question, which started like this. I’m 20 years old this year and only in 10th grade. I was thinking, where this is going, maybe I should tell her I’m already dating someone, but didn’t say anything. She went on to say I really want to be a senior this next year, what do you think I need to work on to get to be a senior. As with all Chinese students, they need work on English. I told her that, and we planned on how she can do that well. We talked for the better part of the class period about English and how to learn English better. I was kind of curious about why she came to me, but it became evident as we continued talking. The reason she came to me is I’m the teacher that took time to teach her and get her up to speed in my class when she first came to school. She told me that she really trusted me and didn’t mind talking to me. There are times that I think that I’m not doing anything here, other than the obvious, teaching science, but then from time to time, God reminds me that I’m doing a job for him here.
I got something from UC yesterday. One thing I got was a sheet of crazy quotes; I thought I’d share some with you:
· A day without sunshine is like, you know, night.
· “We’ve got to pause and ask ourselves: how much clean air do we need?”
· “Once you accept the universe as matter expanding into nothing that is something, wearing stripes with plaid comes easy”
· “I love deadlines, I especially love the whooshing sound they make as they fly by”
· “USA Today came out with a new survey: Apparently three out of four people make up 75% of the population.”
· “Lack of brains hinders research”
· “I would not live forever, because we should not live forever, because if we were ever supposed to live forever, then we would live forever, but we cannot live forever, which is why I would not live forever.” –Ms. Alabama, in the 1994 Ms. Universe contest when asked if she wanted to live forever.
· “’And now the sequence of events in no particular order”
· “The world is more like it is now then it ever has before”
I really like the last one, but then the one from our Ms. Universe is pretty good too. They say kids say the darnest things, but I think celebrities say the stupidest things.
I think I’ve learned a new lesson. The sad part is that it has taken me 9 months of teaching to learn. I’ve learned what teaching actually is. It's not so much instilling as much knowledge as you can so that students can pass a test. We as teachers do want to instill knowledge, but I think more than instilling knowledge I want to teach students how to teach them to do it for themselves. You know the story, give a man a fish feed him for a day; teach him to fish, feed him for a lifetime.
From what I’ve heard we are about to become more pressed for teachers. From what I’ve heard one is being transferred to another island, another one is going home because the other one is being transferred. They have been getting involved in a way that is against the rules here. So we will be down two more teachers it sounds like next week, 2 weeks later we have one more leave, and a week after that we have another one leave, so by the time it's all said and done we will have had 7 teachers go home over the course of the year. Some have been medical, some have been slightly selfish, and others were negotiated when they signed their contracts. It kind of makes me wish I would have negotiated a sooner date when I signed my contract, but I guess I’ll be home as soon as I can.
From what I’ve been told, the dry season is officially over, it lasted about 2.5 months. I guess the fact that it has been raining every day for like 2 hours over the course of the day is the reason why the dry season is over. The rain couldn’t have come at a better time either. All the water on the island is gotten from rain water and we were getting low. God has been amazing at keeping the water here so that we haven’t had to ration water. Just about the time that it seems like we are going to have to ration water, we get a really good gulley washer that fills our tanks up again, and we are out of the red. Its amazing being over here, we rely on God so much more just for the things we need here, food, water, sleep. There have been a couple of times where the island has nearly run out of food, you go to the store and all you see is bare shelves, it's kind of disconcerting. But luckily God brings another boat to refill the island and we make it through the time.
Ok, this is an internal correction. The teacher that I thought was going to go to Chuuk is just going home as is her “boyfriend”. I don’t know all the reasons and all, but that is what’s happening. Regardless of where they were going, the result doesn’t change, we are still down 2 more teachers.
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