First week of school

The school year is off to a good start. The principal says “we are a small school but we are big”. That is, we don’t have a lot of students but we do big things.

At the start of last year the school was already one teacher down due to retirement. Before I came in January another teacher retired and this year one of the teachers will be attending college.

We were able to replace the teacher who left for college but we are still short the teachers who retired last year. Given the size of the current student population we are only allocated so many teachers so the principal has adjusted the staff. The first and second grades are combined this year. The new teacher is in grade five and the principal needed to figure how to staff the third grade.

First school assembly
One of the new signs in school
Rather than just teacher literacy I’m more a general purpose 3rd grade teacher focused on math and language. I work well with my primary co-teacher who is a student teacher. We are able to prepare for the lessons and co-teach most of the subjects. The principal will also be working in the class for literacy although the first week found her busy with other things. 

The third grade class is small, six students. As might be expected there is a range of abilities among the students. Two need remedial help and adjusted assignments in the lessons. Two can use help with site words. One needs help reading and one is reading independently. So we range from alphabet recognition to independent reading in the language department. There are similar differences in math.

Co-teaching is nice with only six students as we can just about provide tailored work to each student within the primary lesson. I think we will be doing a good bit of differentiated lessons in addition to other forms of co-teaching as we get to know each other’s styles and strengths.

Our schedule of classes

Teaching class

And it will be easier when we get some books. I don’t have a text book/workbook for any subject as there was a general lack of third grade books on the island. I hear books are now available.

 We do have the general scheme of work that is pretty standard and have started with that.

Also the power supply for the printer blew up during prep week, so hard to get handouts and such…

Still, this first week with the students was a good start to the year. I now have a feel for the abilities and personalities of the individual students, given six students I realize that is not that much of an accomplishment. We are working on class rules, showing that we love and care about each student, and doing a little pushing to find current capabilities.

  • Teacher gives two digit math addition problem without carry on the board. (22+41)
  • Student sees two digit math and says “Oh, I can’t do this.” Plops head on desk to cry. 
  • Teacher comes by the little guy and shows him how he can do it.
  • Student back to smiling.


Peace Corps swearing in during the first week of classes


Last week I had to miss a bit of school. We had the swearing in of the twelve new volunteers on Thursday afternoon. They are a good bunch, happy to get started in the schools. We also had a few assigned to St. Vincent swear in with the group.

There was a security event on St. Vincent and in an “overabundance of caution” the volunteers and trainees were temporarily moved off the island. Some of the trainees assigned to St. Vincent swore in with the people here and some on St. Lucia. I don’t have the details of the security event but we all hope that everyone is able to return to their sites in short order. Being pulled from your site can be very difficult.

New volunteers with the Ambassador in the center front


Oh, and one more thing. I got a new haircut for the start of school and now know that I need to be careful when I tell the local barber “short”. This is shorter than I expected.

Short hair

Love always,
John

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