Mostly about students--and some thoughts about water

9-18-08 I have been trying to get the seniors to write stories, right? And most of the time their "stories" have been poorly written re-tellings of Marshallese legends. Technically, not bad for a bunch of kids whose imaginations have been fed mostly by television and movies. Today their final drafts were due--and, trying to keep ahead of myself in grading everything, I began reading them this afternoon. One of the seniors is a quiet kid, pretty smart, sometimes picked on by the other guys who are very immature--and he finally grasped the idea that stories usually have some plot to them. Something happens in them--and he understood that. Granted, his paper to begin with had been all description--good description, but not a story in the truest sense. Today he comes into class, brandishing his final draft. I asked him how many drafts he'd done. "Three," he admitted shyly. Oh, he has no idea how much that excited me!!! That answer just totally made my day.

On the other hand, there are lots of kids who DON'T get what we're teaching. We just finished up midterms (we're on a quarter system), and many of the juniors are doing poorly, mainly due to their lack of studying, but still. It's disheartening to see that these kids just do not care about education in general. And there is so much potential sitting in those seats! Smart kids without any motivation, whatsoever. Some are motivated--and I would love to see some study done about why this kids studies and this kid doesn't. Quite possibly the deciding factor is their parents--if the parents don't care, the kids probably won't, either. I wish we could get the parents to care.

I'm the sophomore class sponsor--and we had chapel last week. The three girls who actually volunteered to lead song service really didn't lead it--they more or less stood next to the wall, singing quietly, and the one holding the microphone was holding it level with her hip. No use whatsoever! It's weird, that these kids who will talk practically incessantly while in their seats instantly clam up once they're in front of the classroom--I'm considering having them do group projects that require reports being made to the entire class. *sigh* I care a lot, and they care so little. It's certainly one of the hardest aspects of my job thus far.

We finally had rain after approximately four days without it. Rain is good, by the way. It fills up the fresh water catchment, which provides us with fresh water showers and tap water. For the rainy season, four days is a long time without rain. Without rain, we use the bucket of standby fresh water and a cup for showers and wash our dishes--and sometimes our clothes--in salt water. Salt water doesn't rinse very well, we're finding out. One night last week, it rained while we had no power, so Megan and I (it was her idea) washed our hair in the runoff from the gutter (well, really the flatbottomed plastic pipes that eventually empty out into the catchment) that was so full that it was spilling onto the walkway between all of the apartments on the second floor. Maybe someday I can draw out a map of our house, which has lots of apartments and rooms fit into a rather small space. However, the hair cleaning from that water was very refreshing. I think I've mentioned that because we have air conditioning, we don't have heated water--which is something that I am looking forward to from back home, that's for sure.

I certainly like living near the ocean--right now, anyway. We actually live in the center-ish of the island, but the school is across the street from the ocean. I love the sunrises and the waves and the vista that I see. If I had film for it, I would wish that I had brought my camera with the panoramic feature. Unfortunately, that camera has no film, probably needs batteries, and is inside of the camera bag hanging from my bunkbed at home. The ocean changes colors and wave intensities--and it's always interesting to watch the tide come in and go out, like the ocean was breathing or something. I've never lived where I could observe tide changes before. It's really cool. The sound of the waves is also awesome. It's like background music to our everyday lives of going from home to school, from school to home--and sometimes we deviate a bit and go to Triple J. I am thinking that a hop on the ferry and a splurged meal at the so-called "American Eatery" at the dock would be a nice treat. Ooh, news for those of you who care about my weight and such! (Which is probably next to almost none of you, but whatever, this is exciting to me.) I have officially lost 6.5 pounds, so I'm "winning", whatever that means.

All right, I need to be off to bed. Night.

~Ashlee