Home Sweet Home

I ended up with a bunch of free time two weeks ago due to an unfortunate encounter with wasps on my way home from school. Since I was sitting around with nothing to do, and I couldn’t do write very well with a swollen hand, I ended up taking the time to do some much needed cleaning and organizing around the house and in my room. Here are some pictures of our house in New Amsterdam:

The Kitchen

Living Room/ Dining Room

Note the fan. This thing (affectionately known as the jash cool, its “brand name”) is my lifeline here. I have a hard time sleeping or sitting inside our house during the day without it now.

My Bedroom

The Front Porch/ Laundry Area

The black thing on the side is our water reservoir tank. We used to worry it would be empty before we could refill it. Now we run to turn it off so that we don’t have a waterfall and a flooded porch.

The view from our front porch. The Internet café/ snackette is the white building across the street. The guard shack and pavilion sitting area are to the right. Our front yard doubles as the plot for the agricultural students, but they haven’t planted anything yet…so the goats and cows take care of our lawn maintenance sometimes.

Technical Difficulties

Sorry for the missing pictures in the last post. I'm using word to type up the blog posts offline now, and for some reason the pictures didn't go through when I tried to publish the last one. I'll try to figure out what going on and repost in the next couple of days.

Teaching with Limited Resources

One of the things that was discussed a lot during the Orientation was how we could be effective teachers in a situation where there are limited resources. I think that our conversations and the workshops mentally prepared me so that I wasn't shocked by what I saw at BHS, but being in the situation and trying to work around the problems has been quite the learning experience.

First and foremost, the thing that's missing the most from the schools are the teachers. There are some teachers who always come to work on time and teach all of their classes. Compared to what I've heard about other schools, even New Amsterdam Multilateral (where I live), Berbice High is relatively well organized and well staffed. However, there are quite a few who show up late to work if they come at all, and these same people show up late for class or for registration (attendance), which really interferes with the effectiveness of the people who are trying to teach. In Colleen's situation, the teachers show up to school, but then they proceed to spend all day in the teachers' lounge instead going to class. Because of the way the classrooms are designed, it can be difficult to teach the kids even when the adjacent classes have someone teaching a class and keeping the kids relatively quiet. However, when the classes don't have a teacher and the kids are getting loud, communicating in the class can become frustrating, if not next to impossible. Some of the science teachers in the upper classes work around this by taking their class to the lab. It's not a feasible thing to do for every class, but it's something I hope to be able to do more, especially as I start doing more practical activities with my students.

Adequate numbers of textbooks is another big problem. Some kids have their own textbooks, but most students get their books from the school bookroom. There aren't enough for each child to have their own, so either the students have to form groups in class, or they have to go to another class to borrow a book. Last week I had to distribute books to my form class, the kids who I'm responsible for to take attendance or in case there's some problem in the class. There weren't enough English books to go around, so I had to randomly pick the kids who were going to get a book. The hardest part was near the end, when one students quietly mentioned to me that he didn't get a book as I was leaving the class. Knowing that some of the kids won't have access to books for homework, and would have to go around asking to borrow one for class is still hard for me to think about.

BHS is lucky to have a science lab and some supplies, but even there the resources are severely lacking. I've been working with some of my kids on the cell and the microscope, and part of the lesson was for them to actually go and look at specimens so they would have some hands on experience. Corin and I went in a couple of days before my activity to look at the scopes and see what slides were useable. We found that there were only two, and they were very simple microscopes that used a mirror for a light source and weren't powerful enough to magnify in much detail. We got them to work ok, but it struck me that just six months ago I was using microscopes that I could use to see the details of animal cells and even bacteria, something I couldn't even dream of doing here. Even in middle school I used microscopes this powerful. Every now and then, when I'm standing in the lab, I can't help but think about the wide difference in resources I had growing up and what these kids have.

One of the major challenges I've faced in school so far is working around the lack of resources and their repercussions. It's something that we all have to figure out throughout the year as we go along.

Hightlights of the first week of school

Part two of the double-post: Here's an idea of what my day is like.

Monday:


7:45 am: Bike to school while trying to avoid pedestrians, cows, potholes, and taxis. All concern about whether I’m flashing people has disappeared; I’m more concerned about whether I’m going to make it to school in one piece.

8:00 am: Arrive at BHS very sweaty, silently thank God that I’ve made it, and find the teacher’s lounge in the IT lab, because the administrative building is still being painted. Find out that I’m teaching forms 1,2, and 4 integrated science. Then spend 15 minutes trying to figure out my schedule on the insane (handwritten) timetable after all of the other teachers have left for the opening assembly.

8:30 am: prepare to sit in the teacher’s lounge for the next three hours or so because my first class isn’t until after lunch ends at 11:15. Mentally prepare myself for my first class as a teacher. Try to sit in the cross breeze so that the sweat can dry a little.

9:00am: talk to the Head of the science department (HOD) and find out that they want us to teach 3rd form physics and maybe even maths classes. Either that or join another department and teach social studies or English. Nothing is decided, but I begin to get nervous that I’ll be teaching a 4th form maths class.

10:20 am: lunchtime. I end up waiting until 10:40 to go to the canteen because of the huge mass of students all trying to buy lunch from two lunch ladies. It’s still crazy when I decided to brave the crowd, but one of the benefits of being the teacher is getting served first, so I don’t have to wait too long.

11:15 am: begin my first class of second formers with introductions, class rules, and then begin teaching the scientific method (it was the only thing I could come up with without the textbook or the curriculum guide to go off of). Lesson goes ok, but I’m stretching things as much as possible because the kids are shy and a little reluctant to participate.

12:25: second break. Take a deep breath and relax for the next hour.

13:20 (1:20 pm; the 24 hour system of time keeping is used here): begin my second class with the first form students. They’re more enthusiastic and a little easier to manage, especially because it’s their first day at a new school as well.

14:30: school day ends. After meeting up with Corin and gathering our stuff, be prepare to brave the road home once more.

14:45: Leave school. The road is slightly less chaotic than before, but still scary. I bump into a parked taxi while trying to avoid a moving taxi, and then struggle to peddle away while the taxi driver is shouting at me.

15:00: Make it home and thank God I survived the day. Immediately shower because at this point I’m drenched in sweat. Sit and relax for a while.

16:30: wash clothes by hand.

18:00 dinnertime.

18:45 head over to the internet café to look up ideas for leading class tomorrow, because I still don’t have any books or any hints as to what the students are supposed to be learning this term.

19:15: leave unsuccessful. This happened to be the busiest day at the internet café, so the internet was too slow to get anything done.

19:30 sit at the dining room table with my housemates for the next couple of hours trying to think of ideas. Finally decide to have the class “follow the scientific method” with a little experiment and also plan on teaching them averages. Also come up with a short lesson on the units of measurement and unit conversions just in case.

21:00 bed time.

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Tuesday was pretty much the same as before. We woke up to the sound of torrential rain outside, and it didn’t let up at all by the time we were ready to go to school. We ended up taking a taxi and shared the car with about five primary school kids and one student from our high school. Since the time table was still in flux, I decided to double check my classes for the day. Lo and behold, I found out that I’m also a 3rd form physics class…which worries me, because I just took my first real physics class last year. The only consolation is that I only have the kids once a week, and they’re not depending on me for their big standardized tests, the CXCs.

I told my HOD that I don’t really know what to prepare for this new class because I never got any books, so she promised to get me some materials to work with. I’m really thankful that I had prepared the extra lesson on units of measurement, because that’s what the students ended up learning that day. My HOD did bring me the books in the end, but it wasn’t until I was in the middle of my first physics class. Yes, during class. We quickly found out that it’s common for teachers or students to interrupt class if they need to find a student or give the teacher something. Despite the semi-regular interruptions by teachers and students, and the confusion of the schedule, things went ok all things considered.

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The rest of the week was pretty normal (for Guyana). The timetable for the school is still changing a lot, even into the second week of school. As a result, I still don’t really know all of the classes I’ll be teaching this year. In addition, it takes a long time to get the materials I need to teach: nearly halfway through the second week, I still don’t have the book for my first form classes. A big part of being here is being flexible and working with what we have, even in the confusion and miscommunications.

New Amsterdam

This time I'll post twice to get everyone up to speed about living in New Amsterdam and my first week of school.

Our long awaited departure from CPCE arrived Saturday, August 28th. My housemates (Corin and Colleen) and I Ioaded up in a minibus for the drive over to New Amsterdam. After a long delay (the minibus was 45 minutes late, and then we waited for more passengers in Stabroek market for another hour or so), we were off. It’s a pretty easy drive out here from Georgetown, but certainly not boring. On the way we discovered yet another use for a machete (as a whip to herd cows across the road), passed a random parade/ protest against domestic violence, and crossed over the new floating (read: scary) bridge over the Berbice river. We were tired and a little shell shocked when we finally arrived at our house on the Multilateral Compound, but thankfully Sir Buster (a teacher at Multi who came to collect us) bought us dinner and water, so we settled in the best we could.


New Amsterdam consists of three parallel roads, Strand, Main, and Republic, connected by several cross streets. Berbice High School is on the other side of town, so Corin and I will have to master the fine art of biking with skirts to get to school every day. Across the street from us is an internet café/ “snackette” (kind of like a mini convenience store with tables to sit and eat there), and we’ve made friends with Miss Lolita and her family who run it.

Over the last few days, we’ve been exploring the town and slowly getting the house set up. Our house has three bedrooms, a toilet and a shower room, a living/ dining room, and a small kitchen. The biggest task was fumigating the kitchen to get rid of the cockroach population that had taken residence in the cupboards. Once that was done and the shelves were lined, it started to feel a little more like home. I shared a room with Corin for the first few days here, because my room didn’t have any curtains. However, the house is pretty much set up for now, and I’ve moved into my room.

The major problems that we’ve been dealing with have been the lack of running water and the lack of a refrigerator. First, the water situation. The water supply to our house connects to the city line via a PVC pipe that runs through an overgrown trench. Due ot the large mass of weeds, the city line disconnected from the house line pretty much every day. Last year, the girls who lived here had to connect the main water line from the city to the water line to the house because it disconnected all the time. In addition, the city water is not on 24/7, so everyone has a reservoir tank that they fill while the city water is on to save water for the off periods. When we got here, the line to the city water was disconnected, and the water tank was empty…which made for an interesting 24 hours until we could get help to connect the lines and fill the tank.

Everyday when the water was supposed to be on, we first had to turn off the pump and check to see if the lines were still connected. Mostly, they weren’t, so thankfully the maintenance man helped us connect the pipes for the first week and a half. Then we had to fill the tank and pray that the line stayed connected until it filled. This system was kind of annoying, but for the most part it worked when we could get the water lines connected. After many calls to our field director and the Regional education officer (REDO) who is supposed to take care of these issues, it seems like we got the problem fixed.



The refrigerator, on the other hand, is still an issue. We’ve had a couple of people look at it, and someone was supposed to pick it up on Monday to repair it, but it’s still a glorified pantry sitting in our kitchen. This is annoying because we can’t store meat or fresh vegetables, and we have to eat what we cook immediately the fact that the water got fixed within three weeks gives me hope that this will be resolved soon as well.

A selection of pictures

My humble lodgings during orientation at CPCE

Cummings Lodge Secondary, where we had the teaching practicum

A caterpillar that our students brought to show us the day after our nature walk

The students who attended the lessons during the practicum

Me, Colleen (one of my housemates), Marek (another volunteer), and the 5th form students

Teaching practicum

The third week was super busy with a teaching practicum in the mornings and meetings in the afternoon. At Cummingslodge secondary, we led maths and science lessons for 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th form students (which is roughly equivalent to 8th-11th grades). I helped plan and taught food chains with three other volunteers to the 2nd and 3rd form students the first three days. The last two days we taught the nervous system to the 4th and 5th form students.
It was pretty eye opening to work with the classes. Not only did I get some much needed practice in leading a class and planning a lesson, I also learned a lot about the difference between Guyanese and American students:
-Guyanese students are very meticulous about keeping their notebooks neat. For example, they make sure that they’ve copied the board exactly as written, they use rulers to underline or draw diagrams, and they’re not allowed to tear pieces of paper out. A lot of time in class was spent letting them copy things from the board. I also noticed that they would either draw a line through any mistakes and write “cancel” or they would (neatly) remove the entire page from their books. I remember back in middle and high school that there was not particular way we had to keep our notebooks. Students would tear things out of their notebooks all of the time and would hand things in with rough edges. Here, students would never do such a thing; the one time we asked students to tear a piece of from their notebooks (before we were informed that it wasn’t allowed), most of the kids spend a long time making sure that the pieces were neat by tearing the paper with a ruler.
-teachers here are called “sir” or “miss” and their first names. For example, a male teacher would be “sir Luke”, and a female teacher “miss Lizzy”. When they answered us, it was “yes miss” or “sir” followed by the answer; much more formal than I expected. Sometimes they stood when we entered the classroom in the morning (it was a little inconsistent though; it seems like that may be a custom, but since we didn’t know the students relaxed after the first day).
-Even though we were only there for a week, it seemed like some of the students became really attached to us. On the second day, a couple of students brought me and another teacher flowers so they could show us what some of the plants we talked about looked like. Also, Colleen, my house mate, got hugs from several of the students after the second or third day.
On Friday, we had a closing ceremony with the students. A couple of them sang songs for us, there were some impromptu speeches, and we gave them certificates and snacks. It’s really unfortunate that none of us will be teaching there this year, because it was great that they came out for the week to get lessons from us.
In the afternoons we had our last orientation sessions in preparation for our dispersal along the coastal regions. After spending three weeks together adjusting to the new country, it was a little strange to leave to our sites, but I’m sure that the group will visit each other during free weekends.