Summer is here?

I got a big shock yesterday. I opened a box of thermometers in preparation for a 9th grade lab (burning a peanut - how cool is that?), to discover that they all read 96 deg. F. Are these thermometers working? I thought they might be hot from sitting in the box, so I left one out on my desk. A while later - 96 deg. I asked the 7th graders if it was summer yet. "No, not yet."

We are lucky that the weather cools down at night. We've created a screen door out of a sheer curtain so we can leave the door open in the evening. Strangely, it doesn't feel that hot. I am lucky that I only have 2 classes after lunch. It's no wonder school starts at 7 and ends by 2:30. Is there really any learning happening from about 1 p.m. on?

Woe are the 8th graders

I have the fortune (or misfortune, depending on the point of view) of replacing one of the worst teachers ever (again, depending on your point of view). Mr. Mitch apparently was often found sitting at his desk with his feet up tossing a ball up into the air while the students "worked." The English teachers are still getting journal entries from some of the 8th graders about how Mr. Mitch was the best teacher because he "was laid back and didn't make them do anything." After a tough bout with the 8th graders complaining that Mr. Mitch was a much better teacher, I brought the issue up to the 9th graders. "But Miss, we didn't learn anything," they contested, soothing my seething ego. As my father wrote when we got here in November, " It is better to replace the worst teacher than to replace the best teacher."

We just closed out the grades for the 3rd quarter. The 9th graders have been good students and have only been getting better, except for a couple of episodes with cheating. I've helped them turn their physics problems into legible and complete thoughts. Almost everyone is now turning in homework and only one (out of 13) student failed this quarter. I love to give them labs so they can get hands-on experiences, and they work hard. The 7th graders are a miracle in the making. I like to describe the 7th graders by saying they are getting better every week. 7A still amazes me in their craziness. There are only 10 of them, but they have the ability to turn the class period into complete chaos. I often wonder what I would do with 20 or 30 of them, or maybe even up to 40 that I have been told can be the class size in the public schools. Despite the craziness, the most amazing thing about them is the transformation from doing nothing into being real students. In November, they would either not turn their homework in or they would turn in garbage. How many lectures did I have to give to explain that "Directed Reading" meant that you actually had to read the book in order to answer the questions on the worksheets? I structured homework assignments for each chapter to encourage reading the book rather than just guessing at answers. After failing half of the 21 students in both 7A and 7B for the 2nd quarter, the children responded by not only turning in their homework, but starting to take pride in it and trying to do it right. They may even actually study for tests now, but that is still in doubt. The 3rd quarter result is that only 2 students failed - these are the 2 who are still not turning their work in.

The 8th graders, however, have still not recovered from the 1st quarter of not having to do any work. Or perhaps from a lifetime of lowered expectations. After a second semester of developing strategies to get them to do their work, turn their homework in, holding them in at lunch time, lecturing them on the fact that they are failing my class, attempting to give them rewards for complete work (and failing because the work still wasn't completed), the kids were in shock today when I passed out the grades to the 27 of them and half of them found out that they had failed science. "But miss, how could I fail?" they argued, as they are prone to do whenevery anything doesn't magically fall into their lap. "The 8th graders have not been doing their work. You can't pass science class if you don't do your work," was my even reply. I think all of us teachers are shocked that the students have no comprehension that they are failing. We pass out quizzes with failing grades, students don't do projects and don't hand in homework, we have mid-term meetings with parents and hand out mid-term grades. The lack of comprehension that they are failing is in itself amazing. 8B ended with this comment from a student who had just received her grade of 66 (70 is passing), " This is why I hate science." My retort, keeping in mind that the 8th graders are well known for their bad attitudes, " Oh, that's a good attitude. You hate science because you don't do your work and as a result, you failed."

The good news is that my new strategy for teaching the 8th graders seems to be working. Lectures are almost always unsuccessful because the students can't stop talking long enough to get any information that is handed to them. My goal now is to work the heck out of them and have them learn the material through the work that they do. Any information presented in the book is transformed into board problems or worksheets. The goal is to keep them working in the classroom and anything not completed can be taken home for homework. Amazingly, for the past 2 weeks, they have been working. Perhaps an inability to listen translates into an ability to fill out worksheets. Perhaps one of my lectures about how students who do not do their homework can not pass science class finally sunk in. Perhaps they finally realized that Mr. Mitch is not ever coming back and I am not ever going to lower my expectations and let them slide by. I really don't know. I am trying to celebrate the good moments - the days of good work - and ignore the days of bad attitudes. Every day is a new day, a new chance for each student (and me) to start again.

continuation- regresar,playa el tunco y feria

 As a substitute, you tend to get a little bit more good behavior out of the kids.It's funny how they will tattle on each other too. If you turn your back for a minute while they are having a quiz for example, one or two will raise their hand and say, "Mr. Alex, Jose is whispering" or, "Marisela is not in her seat".We had about 10 minutes left before the end of the school day when they started to get really rowdy. I began telling them to be quiet and sit in their seats. I found myself repeating myself and progressively getting louder and louder when I decided to whistle as loud as I could and start counting. At that, they all ran as fast as they could to their seats as if they the sky was falling. It took a moment for the decibles to subside but they finally did. One girl asked me to tell them a joke. I couldn't think of a joke off the top of my head, but I knew I had to think of something to try to keep their attention, so I said, "I have a question for you, I will write it on the board".On the board I wrote, why did the chicken cross the road? One thing we found here is that a joke, or a concept, doesn't always translate well, and these are third graders.
 They were very quiet for a minute so I read it out loud. I began getting a few answers. "Because, he, he  wanted to see his friend". "Mr., Mr. he wanted to beat the cars." "He wanted to find a new way home." "She wanted to find her babies." "He was looking for food." Here is my favorite. One boy ran up to me and said, "Mr., Mr., because he, he wanted to see Jesus." I was puzzled for a second, laughed and said, "See Jesus! "That's creative but it's still not the answer." I was laughing inside. Kids are funny. Finally, I told those who had stood up to sit back down, and everybody be quiet so I could tell them the answer. "Is everyone ready?" Yes Mr. We are ready. I couldn't wait. As i told them the answer, I drew a picture on the board. "The chicken crossed the road", pause, eyes waiting, watching, "to get to the other side." The silence was golden. You could see the let down and puzzled looks in their eyes, then there were a couple of, "Aye Mr.s." At that it was time to go, which of course they were ecstatic at, and out the door they ran. By Mr., by Mr.

The Little Things

The longer we are in Honduras, the more aware I am of all of the little things in my life that have changed. All the tiny bits and pieces of living that have no way of remaining the same, try as I might to hold onto them, all as a result of merely being in a foreign country.

The most constant reminder of this is the simple act of washing my hands. It’s an easy thing, right? Universal worldwide, right? Soap, water, nothing to it. Right? What, don’t they sell soap in Honduras? The catch, actually, is the water. Of course they sell soap in Honduras!

In the US, I’m all about saving – save plastic tubs to reuse later, save plastic bags to use for garbage, save corks for some project that will never happen later, and definitely save water (unless I’m taking a nice, warm shower). In an effort to save water, my US hand-washing routine consists of squirting soap into my hand, then turning the faucet on and washing my hands. It’s only a little bit of water, but in my crazy recycling brain, every drop counts.

In Honduras, after the 5^th time of standing in front of the sink with soap on my hands and no water running out of the faucet, I realized this routine was no longer going to work for me. Water coming out of the faucet is dependent on too many factors to reliably flow out every time one turns it on, especially at school. Is someone running an outside faucet? Were too many toilets flushed at one time? Did the school just have a water balloon fight? Is this the day of a regularly scheduled Wednesday power outage that everyone seemingly knows about except the US teachers and has the power been out since 7 AM? Is the moon full or has Mercury gone into retrograde? My new routine here is to turn the faucet on first, try not to jump when air explodes out of the water line, and wait in hope that at least a trickle of water will come out. Then, I rub my hands briskly under the water in order to get some cleaning done in case the water suddenly disappears. Finally, I add soap and wash quickly so as to mitigate any risk of running out of water before all of the soap is rinsed off of my hands. Then, I dry my hands off on the ragged cloth hand towel provided in all of the bathrooms except the girls’ bathroom in the secondary school (what did the girls do to deserve this?) There’s no paper towel waste here!

A recent fill-up of the cisterns on school property with water pumped from the nearby small river prompts some last questions about hand washing – if the water is brown, do your hands really get clean? They feel better, they look better, but are they really clean?

I never knew a simple task like washing my hands would be an indicator of a major life change.

PS. Thanks for the underwear.

Semana de Feria, Playa El tunco, y Regresar.

Hello all,
Starting from the last word in the title, we are back. It has been an eventful week here in our neck of the rain forest. Today, I arrived at school to find another teacher had called in sick, so I substituted for the 3rd grade class. They had a test, we went over vocabulary words and they did a book review in groups. One of their words was imaginary. They had to use it in a sentence and most of them were using it improperly. For example, the common mistake was, "I imaginary a dragon outside." Using the chalk board, I gave them examples of the proper use of the word. Later one girl came up to me and handed me a piece of folded paper that said:
From: Laura
To: Mister Alex
You! are! drawing of a heart, a good! Teachers!
When I opened it up there was a drawing of me standing at the chalk board holding a ruler. On the board is written,
Imaginary
The dragon
is imaginary
Next to me is a chair with my name on it. It is so sweet.

Food in Honduras

We get a lot of questions here wondering how we like the food. I guess it’s a big change for a lot of people. Beans and rice. Beans and rice. And maybe some more beans and rice. For us, it’s not such a big change. With my gluten sensitivity, we eat a lot of rice in the US anyway. Plus, we somehow became convinced that we needed to stockpile bags of beans and rice, then, later, we decided to move. I decided we should eat all of the beans and rice before we moved (it didn’t happen – we had somewhere around 4 or 5 bags of beans and just as many bags of rice), so we’d been eating a lot of beans and rice before we left for Yellowstone.

To go with the beans and rice, we have a fresh fruit and vegetable market. It is definitely seasonal as we watch fruits and veggies come and go. We take advantage of trying out fruits we’ve never seen before, with more success than failures. I would love to tell you the names of some of the fruits we’ve tried, but the vendors tell us the names and we promptly forget them as soon as we get distracted by the need to  ask for something else. We are also fortunate in that some of our favorite expensive fruit purchases in the US are native to Honduras and, thus, are relatively cheap: pineapple, papaya, plantain, avocado. February is watermelon season – Alex’s favorite – so we have at least one watermelon a week. I allow my students to eat during class (it actually helps to keep the classroom cleaner), so I was surprised one day when one of my 8A students asked, “Miss, can I eat a jicama?” He pulled out a peeled jicama and proceeded to eat it like an apple. I’ve had jicama on salads, but I never thought of eating one whole, but that’s now one of our afternoon snacks. Another big plus for me that can be purchased at the vegetable market is freshly made corn tortillas. They come at the whopping price of 40 for $1. They are my main bread substitute, but I still ask Alex if he thinks I’m crazy every time I use them to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Supplementing our beans and rice with a little bit of meat is a bit of a challenge. We’ve made a few strange meat purchases, like the hamburger that was clearly what hamburger used to be – all of the ground up parts that maybe we didn’t want to be eating any way. Then there was the purchase of frozen, unpackaged chicken legs and thighs that were placed into a plastic grocery sack for our transport home. We can buy hanging meat in the market, but, after purchasing cheese from a vendor who was slicing raw meat before our purchase and didn’t wash her hands to slice our cheese, I am reticent to buy meat in the market. Many of the mini-grocery stores sell frozen meat, but what we think we’re buying is not always what we get, as evidenced by the hamburger purchase. We do buy a whole chicken every other week, like we did in Oregon, and make numerous meals out of it, finishing with boiling the bones to make soup. Our constant debate is do we buy the packaged chicken that we know is pumped full of chemicals or do we go to the store that sells “free range” chicken, not knowing what regulations are in place, if any, to protect the consumers of “free range” chicken? It’s a tough change since we bought our Oregon chickens from a local farmer in Tillamook. We knew where those chickens came from. A lot of teachers have become pseudo-vegetarians, preferring to only eat meat cooked in the school’s caseta (cafeteria) or in a reliable restaurant. This may be due to the fear of making the meat purchase or just the fact that a lot of the teachers are in their early 20s and have yet to master the art of cooking. (I’m planning to hold a “How to cook a chicken” class soon.) Unfortunately, Alex and I did not leave our ice cream addiction at home. We are regulars at one of the local ice cream shops, buying the tub of ice cream that cost 5 limperas more than other stores because the owner of the store is nice to us and it comes in a better, more re-usable container.

Some of our new recipes (I cook like my dad – mostly on trial and error, occasionally with a recipe):

Plantain – serves 2 to 3

1-2 ripe plantains (skins are turning brown)

Slice plantains however you want to. Place in a shallow baking dish. Add any of the following to the dish: sliced green mangos (I haven’t seen these in the US), mildly hot chili peppers (like jalepenos), honey or freshly grated sugar, freshly grated ginger, liquid cheese (most closely related to sour cream, but not really). Dot with butter and put in the oven at 270 – that would be Celsius, but I’m thinking it’s around 400 or 450 F. Yum!

Chicken soup – serves a lot – probably 8, but could serve 10-12 with side dishes

After you’ve cooked and eaten most of a whole chicken, but the remaining meat, all of the bones, and drippings in a pan and boil the heck out of it all until the bones all fall apart. Strain the liquid into the soup pan. Pick all of the remaining meat off of the bones and add to the broth. Throw the bones out into the empty field 2 doors down for the hungry dogs of Copan Ruinas. Put the broth back on heat so that it will start boiling again as you add vegetables. Add whatever you want in your soup – vegetables, beans, rice, barley (used in Oregon, not here). This is a great way to use wilty vegetables – once they’re in the soup, you can’t tell that they were wilty! If you spiced the chicken well, as we do, you may not need to spice the soup, but add spices to your liking. Don’t forget the salt – not too much, but not too little.