First off I would like to apologize to anyone that reads my
blog. I realize that I haven’t posted anything about what I’ve done in the last
few months. I am always thinking about writing something in my blog but I
always forget or whenever I go to post something I forget what I was going to
say. If you really know me in anyway I’m not the type of person that’s likes to
write stuff down or keep a journal, I would rather tell someone about what I am
doing personally but that is kind of difficult because of time, bad internet,
and time differences. So I am sorry for the lack of blog updates but I will try
harder to at least write something more often.
Anyways, my experience here has been going pretty good. I am
actually in my class room typing this out while my precalculus students are
taking their test. This is the exact same test that I gave them last week
because when I gave them the test last week the class average was a 45%. I
really enjoy teaching math because it is very interesting to me and I love it when
my students understand what I am trying to teach them. We are already very
behind what I have been planning for us to learn in the class and I feel like
almost every day I have to do their homework for them because they say they
don’t “understand” or it “too hard”. I realize that Precal or anything math for
that matter can be very difficult for some people and they may never understand
it. But I really think the main reason behind their lack of understanding is
their lack of caring. Slowly after talking to many of my fellow sm’s and even
locals I’ve come up with some reasons. For many of my students high school is
the most schooling that they will ever have and when they graduate they will
spend the rest of their lives on this tiny island trying to find a job in their
terrible economy living off of others in their family and trying their best to
get everything they can while working as little as possible. Even students that
do have a future of going to college just shrug of studying. Many of my students
just play the blame game. If they do badly on a test, didn’t do their homework,
or don’t understand what is being said in class it is always someone else’s
fault. Even when it is them showing up
to class every other day and talking to their friend the entire class period
they are here. After grading this last test I was going through the test
grading them and it actually made me really depressed at how bad they did. I
think I have only had one test average above 50% this whole year. I do realize
that I am not the greatest teacher in the world but it is just very sad when
you spend all this time during school and every day after school to help them
but they do not have a will to learn. It seems like they think someone else
will do all of the learning for them.
I’m sure this is a challenge that all teachers face but it seems
especially bad here. That is one thing that I am having trouble with right now
and praying about every night.
Beside school this island is amazing. We just spent the last
3 days on an outer island called black coral. Activities on this island
included cooking food, eating food, climbing coconut trees, eating coconut,
sleeping, eating, snorkeling, sleeping, cooking, eating, napping, spearfishing,
eating the minnow sized fish we caught and more sleeping. Needless to say, but
this place along with the help of our Chaplin Pastor Tim I have really learned
to eat, relax. I had a lot of practice doing just that this weekend. I know
that is one thing that I will miss when I go back to my busy college life in
the states so I am soaking in the relaxed lifestyle as much as possible, even
though it was never really much of a stretch for me anyway.
I am very grateful for this opportunity and hopefully I will
remember to write in this blog thing more often and for all of you that
contributed with money with encouragement I am very thankful and happy for this
opportunity.
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