4/11/08
The week before last was “Education Week” in the Marshall Islands. It was about as ironic as “Disability Week” (which was disabling) because we stopped all normal classes to sit around in the sun in Ebeye for five days.
The first day was the opening ceremony. All of the schools waited together (there are about 8 in Ebeye when you include all the private religious schools) on the cement in Ebeye for a keynote speaker that decided not to show up. Two hours after our planned start time, we had an opening remarks, closing remarks, and a prayer, and then no ride back to Gugeegue. Thanks for that.
Tuesday was supposed to be academic fun day at KAHS, because we decided to boycott the “parade” (i.e. walking around the Ebeye loop in the middle of the day under the sun with a bunch of teenagers). So, Laura delegated planning for academic fun day to me, and I made a schedule that had students rotating to different stations based on what teachers were talented in or passionate about. I was going to take groups up to the pass and look at dead coral and talk about marine biology. At 730am Tuesday morning, we got a note from our oh-so-involved Vice Principal, who had previously given us free reign to do whatever we wanted (he doesn’t care, he has a taxi business to worry about), that we were obligated to attend the parade because our principal was on the Education Week Planning Committee. Although, that seems rather odd given that our principal had been touring the United States for the past 3 weeks as a chaperone for “Close-Up,” a US-paid program that takes Pacific Islander students on whirlwind tours of our country. So my well thought out schedule was canned, and we (very resentfully) got on the school bus to go walk around the Ebeye loop for half an hour, and then drive back.
Wednesday was the infamous spelling bee, where students of each grade level were given a list of 40 words to memorize, and while they had no idea what any of the words meant, they sure could spell them. Each grade level ended up having 3-5 winners out of 10 contestants because, well, memorizing the spelling of 40 words is not that hard. Or educational.
Thursday the kids came out to Gugeegue and we sang songs and watched a mission group from the army base put on a play about Jesus. They did a good job, but I’m not sure how I feel about requiring kids to attend a religious play at a public school… but they are all (really, all) Christian to some degree or another, so they didn’t seem to mind.
Friday we went in for the closing ceremony and talent show. Our school sang a song our music teacher made up about Gugeegue to the tune of Heart and Soul. The Baptist high school did a step dance straight out of Stomp the Yard. The Catholic high school performed a mock spelling bee… in drag. All of this was very educational, of course.

On the flip side, my classes went really well this last week, and except for Miseducation Week, school has been excellent since spring break. In chemistry, we put away the American text books and I have been designing some tailor-made curriculum for Marshallese high school students about energy, which is highly relevant (we have had “4-on, 4-off”, which means 4 hours of power, then 4 hours of no power, for the last 5 days with no end in sight – one of the Ebeye generators is toast). Right now we are still working on fossil fuels, but I hope to make it through to alternative sources before the end of the year. And their chemistry foundation has been really helpful – they already know about combustion reactions, hydrocarbons, and carbon dioxide, so explaining climate change and why their islands are slowly disappearing is a piece of cake.
In Biology, we’re working on genetics and DNA. All of it is background for discussing evolution, which I am both excited and terrified to present to them. I’m not sure how they are going to take it.
Then in my Science “Extra Help” class, which is full of all kinds of learning disorders (ADHD, dyslexia, something dysplasia, I don’t even know…but there are kids that can’t copy down the letters of a word on the chalk board in the right order), some kids who are too-cool-for-school, and the occasional teenage mother struggling to catch up after missing a year of school, we are doing a unit on coral. I am working with the RMI Environmental Protection Agency to actually put together some useful high school Environmental Curriculum. What they had produced on coral education was indecipherable to even my most brilliant honor students, so I am restructuring it and making it more accessible for EFL students, and adding useful activities and worksheets along the way. Also, I get to show them all the awesome pictures of coral I’ve taken here, which is cool because the vast majority of them have never seen it, even they are no further than 10 feet away from it on the causeway every day.
Finally, I have found a new way to motivate students. I make a “Top 5” list of the top 5 students in each of my 5 classes, ranked and with their average next to their name. It has become quite competitive, and as a reward, I took all of last quarters Top 5ers to the Marshallese Cultural Center on the army base, which is pretty much the only museum in the country. The kids really seemed to enjoy it – they were shocked to see the missionary paintings of women without shirts on before Christianity arrived, and they loved looking at the pictures of their great-great-grandparents.
I invited last quarter’s top 5ers to be in the “Science Club.” Every Tuesday we meet after school during detention (detention days are the only days when there is a late bus for them to get home on) and do science-related stuff. Last week the kids made a model solar car from an educational kit. It worked, and the kids thought it was awesome.