January 11th-January 15th

These past few days have been very busy in the best way possible! By the end of last week on Thursday and Friday, I was teaching up to three classes a day while still observing other classes. I suggested to Zin, my mentor teacher, that we should give the students warm up questions every day on the previous day's topics and grade them. We both now do this in all of our classes, which I think has been very effective. The students are definitely more motivated when they known their work will be graded. On Thursday night and part of Friday morning, I worked on lesson plans for this week. It took way longer than I expected! I had to make worksheets for every day, a quiz for Friday, warm up questions for every day, and write notes on the topics I am teaching. Zin and I met for an hour Friday afternoon to go over my lessons and give each other ideas. He is using all of the worksheets I made in his classes as well. I was happy to arrive at the weekend after this long week of teaching!

Graded Quiz. Good Job Tior!

Warm Ups

My lesson plan for this week

Friday night, all of the undergrads and Professor Garrod ate dinner at Tide Table, which is connected to a hotel. Saturday morning, bright and early, the girls chartered a boat through Tide Table to go to an outer island called Eneko. It costs 25$ per person, round trip, for the boat fare, and the boat can pick you up any time you request. No one lives on Eneko except for one family that takes care of the island. There are no roads or any infrastructure- it is basically just a tiny island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean that you can walk around in under 10 minutes. It is located 7 miles from Majuro and took about 30 minutes to get to. The best part is that because there are no Marshallese people living there except for the caretakers and it's technically a "rebelle" island (foreigner island), we got to wear bikinis instead of guams! I tried to work off my farmer's tan. It's going to be pretty severe at the end of this trip. When we got to Eneko, we set up camp on the beach on the lagoon side of the island. The water was so clear- we could see everything below us! We went snorkeling and saw giant fish and coral only about 10 feet off shore. There were hundreds of different kinds of fish and coral. The water was much deeper here than at Laura Beach too. Over the course of the day, the tide moved in so that no beach was left by 4 o clock. It's crazy how fast the tide moves! We also got to go kayaking and saw a giant school of thousands of fish swimming below our kayaks. There was a hammock under some palm trees as well, and I spent a couple hours finishing my book there. We are definitely planning another trip to Eneko, but next time we want to rent the bungalows there with our whole group and spend the night!

Boat Ride to Eneko

First Sight of Eneko

Bikinis on the beach!

Day wouldn't be complete without my crocs- don't want to step on coral underwater!

Nancy and I reading in a hammock

On Sunday, Carleigh and Eric were planning on taking us to Enomonit, which is another outer island with a sunken airplane that you can snorkel around. The people whose boat we were supposed to take, however, had to cancel 10 minutes before we were supposed to leave (which happens all the time in the Marshall Islands), so we just went to Laura Beach again instead. We'll take a trip to Enomonit another time. It was really nice to be at the beach two days in a row and I feel really lucky to have been able to do that. I felt kind of bad coming back to Majuro and seeing the same people doing the same thing day after day while we went off to explore. I think that's what's hardest for me on this trip.

Low tide at Laura Beach

Artsy shot from Laura Beach- found an old Bible

Monday morning was my first day as an official teacher in charge of my own two classes! I teach rooms 205 and 206 8th grade English every first and second period. It's so great having my own students now, making my own lessons, and grading on my own. Every day, I grade the student's warm ups, and I made a sticker chart where I give every student who gets a 100% a sticker per day. Whoever has the most stickers at the end of my trip will win a Dartmouth hat or t-shirt!

After I taught my two classes on Monday, I went to find Zin, who covers the last three periods, but he was nowhere to be found. I asked around the office if anyone knew where he was, but no one had seen him. The principal said, "Oh, I guess he's not here." No one asked me to cover for him, which is frustrating because there is little leadership at Majuro Middle School. I had to cover his classes without anyone telling me, so I had to do a lot of improvisation in my lessons and come up with activities on the spot for the students to do. It was very tiring teaching five classes in a row, especially having to come up with things to do for the last three, but in the end it was very worth it and I had a lot of fun with the kids! My favorite part of the day was talking to one of my students, Kioma, at recess. She wanted to see pictures from my life in the US, and she was telling me all about her weekend. It's been really great working with students on a one on one basis. After school, there was a meeting for all the 8th grade teachers to discuss giving practice exams for the high school entrance exams. We'll be administering these every Friday from now on. Tuesday, I taught my first and second period classes, and then Zin was back, so he taught his own classes. It's nice to have my schedule finally and feel like I'm making a difference in the classroom! Tomorrow I start my girl's club, which I am very excited about. I've had a bunch of girls come up to me and express their enthusiasm for the club to start, so hopefully it will go well!

Sunset on Majuro