I am now in my fifth week of school. Things are really busy here. My typical daily schedule:
6:00 a.m. Get up, wash face, watch the sunrise
6:30 a.m. Go for morning run
7:15 a.m. Get breakfast (bagel), rush to school, prep for class
8:00 a.m. Classes start
Noon Done with classes for day (on mon, wed, fri), lunch (PB&J or Ramen)
1:00 Grade papers, make lesson plans for class and band, run errands
3:30 Head to band practice
4 to 7 Band practice: teach new kids, play with band, instruct wind section
7:30 Dinner (Ramen, Easy Mac, or Rice & beans) / movie / free time / grade more papers (usually the latter)
9:30 Read and sleep
Band is really a major commitment but is probably the most fulfilling thing I do. Nevertheless, it keeps me way busy. Practice is 4-7 Monday through Friday and 3-6 on Saturday. So it is basically a second teaching job. I still think it’s weird sometimes that I managed to create an 11-hour work day in the Marshall Islands.
School is incredibly challenging. The students vary wildly in ability and willingness to work. Two weeks ago, I was reassigned to a new schedule that I really like. I teach English on Monday, Wednesday and Fridays, with 4 hour long classes straight through in the morning. I am always exhausted by the end of fourth period, but it’s great to finish off class by noon. I usually have two hours or so of prep work and grading to get done each day so the schedule works out well. On, Tuesdays and Thursdays, I teach Consumer Math to the same students, with three classes in the morning and one in the afternoon. I was really excited to get this class. The students are in serious need of some practical knowledge about money management. I’m finding teaching the class really difficult so far because I always want to teach important concepts but find that the building blocks are not in place to get there yet. For instance, I wanted to go over different per-hour wages and corresponding salaries, and realized that many of the students could not calculate how many hours a person works in a day or a week. I spent over two classes going over how to tell how many hours are between two times (e.g. 9:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m.) and how to tell how many days to multiply this by to get a weekly hours. We just got through with getting weekly wages, and haven’t even done annual salaries yet. So basically I have to spend a lot of time teaching basic skills and trying to make them intuitive. This is going to be a tough class. I am hoping to teach them how to save money, make a household budget and balance a checkbook by the end of the year.
A week ago, we had a three day weekend with a Friday off for Manit Day, which is basically a Marshallese cultural celebration day. It was pretty typical of my experience in the RMI. The National Band was slated for a performance beginning at 9:00 a.m., so I had to wake up early on a holiday and get to band by 8:00 a.m to help move all the equipment. Once we actually got to the Alele museum, the site of the performance and a bunch of cultural activities, we waited around for a while before playing a few warm-up pieces before anyone came. We had practice for two weeks for the performance and had a set planned that was a little longer than an hour. Starting at 9:30 a.m., a bunch of officials started giving speeches. They were all in Marshallese and I could understand very little of what was said. Each speech lasted at least half an hour, and the speakers just kept on coming. Eventually, the conductor and I agreed to reduce the length of our set since it was getting so late. As the speeches went on, we went from planning a set of 10 songs to 3 songs, and then eventually decided to just play the national anthem. At about 12:30, with people still at the podium, we even decided to scrap the national anthem since all the band members were getting hungry and just went home. After getting all the equipment back to band HQ, I was definitely feeling really disappointed. We had practiced a new set for weeks, set up for the gig way early in the morning, all of the kids got really excited to play in front of everyone, and we ended up just doing some warm-up tunes. After a little moping, I ended up going back to the Alele museum to watch the afternoon performances. Typical of any day here, I went from feeling really low to having a great time. We watched a bunch of performances, I had some good Marshallese food, hung out at a friend’s place that houses both air conditioning and a PS3, and went to the resort for a nice swim in the lagoon and some free happy hour food. I ended the day with a great bike ride through the neighborhoods where I stopped to talk to a bunch of my kids and their friends & family.
The band waiting on Manit Day
My classroom
Students gathered for student government election speeches
My school
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