The Students are Here!

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"Education is when you read the fine print. Experience is what you get if you don't."
Lydia M. Child
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After spending over a month on a mostly peaceful, relatively quiet campus, 350 students ages 10 to 20 descended on LCS, and oh, did it feel like 350 students on the first day. Parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, and neighbors all came to drop off their student on Monday. Okay, so maybe it was just parents, but the sudden bustle of activity made it seem like everybody else came too.

Monday was move in day and finished out as a work day. Tuesday we started classes, which was nice because Monday is my hectic day and Tuesday is my relaxed, easy day. Here's the run down: I'm teaching English to two different sections for two different grade levels--sisiem (the youngest class) and the next youngest class, sankiem. I'm not sure what happened to my art class...I think it might turn out to be just a club, but I've been too busy to worry about it for now.

Sisiem are the hands down favorite class of the volunteers, and I am very possessive of them. Only a hand full of these 65 students know English, but they are all so smart and so motivated to learn that I had trouble keeping up with them this week. I have a translator, but during class, students are always looking through their French/English dictionaries in order to formulate questions or answers. They are so eager to learn that it is honestly REDICULOUS. I don't think that I can communicate this properly, so I'm not going to try. In the future, I'll post some student work so that you can see how quickly they become fluent. It will probably be posted in a few weeks...that's how motivated to learn they are.

Okay, my favorite sesiem story: On Wednesday, I taught my second section of sisiem in two out door classrooms (a double block): one right next to the workshop and one on the basketball court. Now, there are two things you should know. One, Haiti is hot; you don't stand in the sun or on a basketball court when the sun is out. Two, power tools are loud. Before the day started, I emotionally prepared myself for a nightmare. So, yes, I had to yell most of my first lesson, (My name is ___. I have two brothers and one sister. My hobbies are English and read...) and the kids complained a little bit about it being hot on the court. However, they loved class. For our second block, we went over rules and the kids had to pick four and illustrate them. They just recieved new backpacks stuffed with school supplies: rulers, glue, and...crayons. I, very sternly, made sure that the students knew that they had to use their new crayons. They ate it up. After explaining the assignment, I let the students spread out anywhere they wanted to so that they weren't in the sun. Some laid on the court, some sat at the tables, and some stayed by the posted rules. They all constantly asked me to look at their illustrations. Adorable.

Sankiem is my challenge class. While some of the students are very advanced, others are new and haven't had an English class before, so I'm still figuring out how to teach them. However, the students are very bright and I expect them to keep me on my toes. Once I get a better handle on the class, I will be able to write more about them, but for right now, they are a conundrum to me, so I'll put off sharing stories about them.

Something else that is worth mentioning from this past week is the bull that was living on our soccer field for a few days. In order to cut costs on buying meat, the school just buys a bull and makes it meat. While I had heard about this in passing, I had not thought about it much until last Friday when I walked out to the incinerator with a student and saw a huge bull with equally large horns. Momentary panic hit me as I walked onto the field and it looked up at us. Don't worry, though, it was tied up and it was very docile. The neighborhood kids even played soccer around it...very nerve racking for me, but the animal hardly moved. Anyways, as you can imagine, the bull wasn't there as a pet. All of the volunteers made plans to go out and watch the bull get turned to meat just so that we would know what we were eating. However, the animal was killed at five a.m. at which time the only person who was up was the group's vegetarian who runs on the soccer field. She said it looked humane, so that's good. So, the bull was killed and all day we were reminded by the dead animal smell that hung around the back of the campus and the cafeteria all day. I don't think the slaughtering would make me a vegetarian, but the smell might. We'll have to see.

So, it's been a great week. It was extremely exhausting, but I still can't wait for another week of teaching. Until next time,

Kristen