July 29, 2016 Parent Meeting
Olivier is a native of Almirante. She stands out as a teacher who cares passionately about her students and their futures. I enjoy working with her groups because it is obvious that they are accustomed to working hard. Olivier’s classes are cheerful, polite and eager for me to return. I rewrote my schedule for next week so that I could attend one of her groups three more times. This group of twelfth graders includes a young man from Changuinola. Changuinola is a forty minute bus ride from Almirante. This young indigenous grandson of a local farmer gets up every morning at four am to walk to the bus terminal in Changuinola in time to arrive in Almirante for his 7 am classes. He never misses a day of school. He volunteers to attend an AfterSchool English program three days a week from 1 pm to 4 pm. Olivier organized a parent meeting for the AfterSchool program. Our young man from Changuinola was there, with his grandmother and grandfather. His grandfather spoke at the meeting. The purpose of his speech was to acknowledge the importance of English and education to the future of his grandson. It is a sacrifice for the family to send this young man to school. They could use his labor on their farm. It is so important to this grandfather that he and his wife arrived at the 1 o’clock meeting at 10 am. When they realized they were late, they waited four hours for it to begin. The purpose of the English meeting was to encourage parents to either commit to the After School program or officially withdraw their students. There are approximately 34 students enrolled, and only 20 of them attend regularly. The other purpose was to put pressure on the coordinators to pay the instructor and the woman who provides lunch for the students. I was given the opportunity to speak. I had no plan. I ended up saying something like this: “I am a high school teacher in forgotten region of Oregon, where unemployment is high, and where the students respond to questions about their futures in the same ways as I have heard here. I plan on joining the military and or going to college so I can have a future. Education is the only path out of a future filled with poverty. I am very impressed to see so many of you here today supporting your children. During my stay here I have met many people who already speak very comprehensible English. The English spoken by Caribbean people in this region is a national resource. Continue to speak English to your children and your grandchildren. “
0 Comments
July 25, 2016 First Day After the Strike
IThe Morning Commute I awoke, and prepared lessons while I ate a tropical breakfast, had coffee and listened to the news coverage of the strike resolution. Like much of the world the government wants to reform education by requiring teacher evaluation to be based on student performance. I left the cabin at around 10:30 am dressed for work and ready to go. I rode my bike to Taxi 25 (lancha), the water taxi terminal. For five dollars each way I can make the 30 minute commute over the blue waters of the Caribbean to Almirante. Once at Almirante, the other commuters and I disembark and head to work. I had to compete with the handful of tourists for a 75 cent Taxi ride to the high school. The taxi drivers pick up as many people as they can, and drop them off at their destinations, which makes the length of the commute a little unpredictable, but the ride a lot more fun. The Workshop (El Taller) Two teachers made the workshop. I shared a two week unit based on a story called, The Little Old Lady Who Wasn’t Afraid of Anything. I demonstrated how the story is read to the students the first day, without concern for comprehension. Next, I have the students perform a short play with 10 parts that represents the basic plot. Next, they participate in a jigsaw reading. Finally they answer basic comprehension questions. This type of unit addresses the needs of the Black students who may already know some English, while providing opportunities for success for students for whom English is a completely foreign language. I will now be attending the after school program to share the materials I brought from Oregon and to meet the students. We are going to set up a Whats App group so that my students and theirs can have a language exchange for the next school year. The School Day I worked with three middle school teachers this afternoon. The purpose was to demonstrate structured pair work and movement patterns that allow for oral practice during which 100% of students participate. By 5:00 when my teaching day was done I wanted to tear off the jacket I have to wear to cover my sleeveless shirt. Protestant modesty is a bit oppressive in this weather. This part of the day was as invigorating as the morning. I am looking forward to tomorrow. A Break in the Day and Private Lessons One of the teachers missed the workshop. I was able to share the materials with her in the teacher’s lounge and explain how to use them. I also invited her to my website for even more resources. My biggest frustration is that the WiFi won’t let the teachers open my site, its blocked and so is Edmodo. They can only access them through their phones. The Commute Home After my bike ride home, I stopped to talk to an Italian couple living next door to me. They invited me for dinner, a simple pasta with tomato, no parmesan. I will bring a fruit salad for dessert and some fresh cheese and rum. How romantic!!!!!! We communicate with Spanish, and English. They speak Italian, I speak Spanish and we use English sometimes. It is really fun. A few pictures of my little house, some crabs, a bit of pork I should have passed by. I love the giant ants at the beach. Those crabs are right outside my door. Hope to have a great day.
STRIKE
Teachers on strike in the central park of Bocas. It costs ten dollars round trip for Island teachers to get to Almirante, so they are striking on Isla Colon. Many of them teach on isolated islands. Part of the expense of rural teaching is transportation to the site so many of them live away from their families during the work week. The conditions are bleak, little more than metal shacks in the jungle. Teachers are striking to receive a pay raise of 300 dollars a month that was promised a year ago. The government does not wish to honor last year's agreement. Vocational Spanish Boat Tours of Bocas Yesterday one of the seniors (sexto) from Almirante and I spent the day video taping tour descriptions on site. It will be a big project that I can work on with my students at North Valley. The goal is to produce a youtube video that includes Giliberto giving the tour in Spanish with English subtitles and my students giving the tour with the Rogue River as a backdrop with Spanish subtitles. There will also be mini lessons to help the guides. The hope is that guides can use this to improve their vocational English. He also told me about the After School Program for English. I have invited myself to the next meeting. Resources for Teachers Yesterday one of the seniors (sexto) from Almirante and I spent the day video taping tour descriptions on site. It will be a big project that I can work on with my students at North Valley. The goal is to produce a youtube video that includes Giliberto giving the tour in Spanish with English subtitles and my students giving the tour with the Rogue River as a backdrop with Spanish subtitles. There will also be mini lessons to help the guides. The hope is that guides can use this to improve their vocational English. He also told me about the After School Program for English. I have invited myself to the next meeting. Today I worked with two teachers during the morning session. I taught a total of 6 example lessons. I also found out that some of the afternoon teachers want to participate. I told the coordinator that if teachers came to the workshops on Monday I would find time to demonstrate in their classroom.
In each classroom I did the following. 1. Have students help me tape up the pre prepared posters with the necessary sentence frames and in this case a family tree. 2. Help the class set up the room in rows of three or four deep and 12 students wide so that I can demonstrate structured movement patterns and pair practice. 3. Introduce myself, the purpose of the program and a few details about where I am from. 4. Gave a mini lesson using family vocabulary as the topic. The students and teachers were totally unfamiliar with the use of vocabulary in context. Basically I have a family tree displayed with names and ages for each member. I then introduced four sentence frames they would use to talk about the family. What is the ___________’s name? The __________ name is ________________. How old is the ____________? The ____________ is ____________ years old. After choral practice, the students practiced changing partners. Basically, the partner on the right moves over one seat in a serpentine pattern that is repeated 5 to 10 times per activity. The purpose is to make repetition less boring. The last activity was a set of questions for the students to ask and answer about the family tree in an A/B pattern. This allowed me to circulate around the room doing informal formative assessments and correcting misunderstandings. Sometime during this activity, the bell would ring at a random time and the students would put the room back in order and help me take down my posters and I would head to the next classroom. I was impressed by how willing the students were to participate in this activity. I was very aware that they already knew the grammar and vocabulary involved. However, they struggled immensely with speaking, but were willing to take the risk. I had 100% participation during every class. I took the time to help the teachers understand that this was desirable. They were concerned that there was no assessment. I tried to emphasize that oral practice during which the teacher circulates through the room is formative assessment and is used to inform the next day’s activity. They are used to writing each day. I tried to emphasize that the writing should happen after the students have mastered the oral language. I want to include a written activity at the end of the week so that they can see how assessment can work in a communicative classroom. Today was a good day. Colegio Almirante has only had an Director for two weeks. This has made it hard to create a schedule. No one in the school was able to provide me with the 9 teachers schedules. Today I told the lead English teacher that I was going to stay at the school until I had them because my employers have asked me to prepare one by Wednesday. I have five of the schedules and a tentative plan of action. I will give five workshops at noon on Mondays to introduce a variety of structures to increase students language production. I plan on working with two teacher per week. The focus will be modeling a variety game and structures they can apply with their own curriculum. Today I introduced the use of information gaps.
I am living with an elementary teacher, Marva. It am truly learning how teachers live and having to face some of the obstacles to effective planning myself, including limited internet access. At this moment I am in an internet cafe surrounded by young buys playing video games. I just finished a two dollar dinner from a little fonda, that specializes in parilla. I had a piece of chicken and yucca. I have attached pictures of the teachers and images in my homestay and neighborhood. |
Kelly TurnerI participated in Panama Teacher Match 2016, a program funded by the US Embassy in Panama and implemented by the non-profit organization, Partners of the Americas, based in Washington, D.C. The program supports the work of Panama Bilingüe, a national initiative enacted by the President of Panama, Juan Carlos Varela, to improve English teaching nationwide though extensive teacher training. Archives
September 2016
Categories |