Trevor: Sunday, July 22, 2007

As we were walking down to the main road from the school on Friday, Steve brought to mind the fact that we have only 5 more weekdays at the school. We'll be leaving the Philippines in roughly a week and a half. It seems like just yesterday that we were making the sweaty trek up the hill to Mapa for the first time, yet at the same time, I feel like we've been here forever. Those two sentiments may seem directly conflicting; it's certainly a strange feeling overall.

This week, there was a mild "disturbance" near the grade 5/6 classroom (ie a strong smell of animal feces), so we merged the class with grade 4 for the day. Both classes have speech during the first period in the afternoon, and together with Wilvin and Jennebeth, I came up with an idea for a vowel-sound competition. We wrote a poem on the board, and each group of 6 students tried to write down all of the words that contained each vowel sound. The group that found the most words won. It got pretty intense, especially after we announced that the winning group would receive extra credit on their next quiz. It seems like the students don't get the opportunity to learn much "outside of the book." Activities where they get to apply what they learn from the textbook seem to really spark their interest.

This weekend, I've been back down at the house, working on the topic lists for the curriculum. Last night, Tom and Diane went to one of the resorts nearby to meet with some old friends, and Steve was at Paras, so I was at the house with Jomar, a grade 6 student who comes down to help at the house on weekends. He's one of the brightest students at the school, and we threw a baseball around, watched Back to the Future on TV, and we got to talk a little bit about what he wants to do after he leaves Mapa. One regret I have is not having been able to bond more on an individual basis with the students. It's very difficult, because while they have an informal relationship with the teachers, Steve and I are constantly referred to as "Sir," and the kids are really shy about speaking English with us. I've joked with Tom and Diane that I'll have to get my little brother to start calling me "Sir Trevor" when I get back to the US. But perhaps most importantly, I was able to get a student's perspective on the English curriculum by talking to Jomar about which teaching techniques helped him and which didn't.

Well it's back to work on the topic lists, but I'll be sure to check in a few more times before we leave.