Parent Visitation

When we have report card days that the school (parent teacher conferences) not very many of the parents show up. In fact i teach over 60 students and the last report card day I talked to a total of 2 parents and one of those parents was of the student that has the highest grade in any of my classes. So what our principal decided to do was since none of the parents were coming to see us that we would go and see them. So for the last 6 weeks we have been going out twice a week driving around the island meeting with parents and getting to know them just so we can know the parents and personally let them know how their kids are doing and to pray  with the parents. It has actually been going pretty so far. Sometimes we will go to a house were the parent will one speak Pohnpeian and we will just still there and Franky will do all the talking. So far we have only been visiting the seniors so David, Pastor Tim and I have been going on these trips with Franky. For some of the students they have had improvements in class after we talked to their parents and others it hasn't done much of anything. Even if a student doesn't really change it is good to get a perspective of what the student's life is like at home. From these visits I have learned a lot more of what the Pohnpeian culture is like and how people really live here.
It wasn't until this week when I really started to appreciate the visits. We had to drive out to a part of Pohnpei called U (pronounced "oooo" yes that is really how it is spelled) to visit a couple of students parents and the last parent we talked to was one of my Precal student's mom. He is one of my better students and he tries hard in class and actually wants to understand but still talks a lot, but I talked a lot in class so I can understand. When we were talking to the mom she was working at the time a little drive up mini store which these things are all over Pohnpei. I already knew a little bit about that student like that he had lived in Hawaii up until 6th grade and had an older brother that was in Hawaii going to school but as the mom talked to us more she mention that her husband had died over 16 years ago and he had been the main source of income for their family. I could tell that it was still very painful for her to talk about it. While they were still living in Hawaii they had to move back to Pohnpei because she could not find work in Hawaii and afford to keep her kids in school because she had never finished her education. So then her goal was to just work as much as possible to give her kids whatever opportunities that they wanted. I was just so shocked at how grateful she was towards us just for having helped her son with just school. It seemed that any little help from the outside was a huge blessing since she had been carrying their family for the last 16 years. 

Here on Pohnpei it is easy to forget about any hardships that you're going through so I had not been thinking about what many people that have death in their families or very tough times in their lives. It made me think that even though we have our problem which everyone does we can just trust God to guide what we say to be an encouragement to those around us that are going through tough times even if it is not a big thing. If we do not know what people's hardships are we will not know what they need to hear without God.

I just thought this would be blog worthy right and I don't really have anything to do right now because the seniors are taking the COM test right now which is the entrance test for The College of Micronesia and most of my classes are seniors so today I really only teach two classes. So I have a feeling its gonna be a good day. The sun is finally out today. It has been very rainy lately which by Pohnpei standards is a lot of rain. We are going to have a potluck/BBQ with all the staff this afternoon out at Nett point so I am excited to have some time outside of school just to relax and swim.