Week Two in Saint Thomas School

Today we taught 6 classes in my classroom. Mondays are our longest days because we have the 11th grade class twice, which is quite strange to me. Some grades we teach 6 times a week, others only 4 times. School schedules are much more consistent in the U.S. Other than that it was a pretty typical school day. Tomorrow is my first observation from my CMU coordinator while in Santo Domingo. I will be teaching an 8th grade geography lesson about Michigan.

Here are some other various observations I have made about Dominican culture:

• Though we all work in schools where the families are quite wealthy, there is a lot of poverty near where we live and teach. Every time we visit the convenience store there are little boys asking to shine our shoes for money. We saw one of the little boys pull his backpack out of a McDonald’s trash bin where he had been keeping it safe. (Not in the actual garbage, but inside the door of the cabinet thing the garbage bin is in.) It was so sad, and very eye-opening. There are also two Haitian women who beg us whenever we walk down our street. It is crazy to see such wealth and poverty so close together.
• When we walk down the street, men sometimes make comments or hiss at us. Men do not do that at home, so I think it is simply because we are fair-skinned, light haired, and clearly not from around here. We are all glad that there is one male student on the trip.
• We have also gotten special treatment at some places. For example, we went on a banana boat ride at Boca Chica and the boat driver got out the nice life jackets for us because we are white. It seemed so strange that he just came right out and said that he only uses the nice life jackets for the white people. You would never say something like that in the U.S! We have heard many different comments about race that are quite surprising.

Oh and the soccer tournament is still going on! We haven’t stayed to watch, but we see a little bit as we are leaving the school each afternoon. They sell Papa Johns pizza, snow cones, and popcorn, and it is televised, so I guess it is a pretty big deal! Go Falcons!

Day Two!

Today my teacher only had 3 class periods – 11th, 12th, and 8th grades. I taught the 11th grade class about the Progressive Era in the United States. I think that it went well, the students had some great questions and seemed interested in the topic. The 12th graders gave presentations on government. The 8th graders have a test later this week so they worked on reviewing information on geography in North and South America. I’m looking forward to teaching more in the 10th and 11th grade classes, since the other classes will be doing presentations for most of my time here.

Some other observations from my second day of school:

-They do not speak English or Spanish, they speak Spanglish. Everything is a mixture of the two. For example they might say: Canada is bigger than the U.S. pero less people y cities. My teacher explained that they just use whichever word comes to mind first whether it is Spanish or English. I am glad I already know some Spanish!

-I learned that the majority of my students come from very wealthy families. They all have iPhones and macbooks.

-The teachers described Saint Thomas as kind of a soccer boot camp. Soccer is a huge deal.

-My students are all part of facebook groups where they can communicate with the teacher. She posts all of their assignments and powerpoints so that they can access them from home. I would love to be able to do this in my classroom at home, but everyone there is so afraid of using technology such as facebook as part of school.

 

Overall, I think today went very well. After school we had another delicious dinner, went swimming, and a few of us went out for a snack at a local restaurant.