and the work begins

As orientation draws to a close, I am reminded of what I came to Pohnpei to do (teaching, for those of you who have also forgotten).   Although my days have been filled with various lectures, discussions, and workshops designed to make me a better teacher, it’s easy to fall into the “vacation trap” – a term that I have just now coined that refers to how easy it is to forget you’re somewhere for a reason when you volunteer on a tropical island.  Not that I haven’t been working hard, I just don’t think I’ve fully grasped the reality of the fact that I’ll be a full-time teacher in ten days.  

Up until today, my teaching practicums involved teaching the other teachers how to teach a topic.  How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?  But today, I got my first real experience in front of a group of Pohnpeian students.  Authentic ones – not just the phony American ones I’ve had for all my other practicums!  I think that this experience really allowed the reality of our situation to sink in for me.  Every one of the ten volunteers got to test out an hour-long lesson on groups of 30-40 college students that are currently in orientation for the upcoming school year.  I think one girl accidentally told her students in her introduction that they would be her guinea pigs – unfortunately, things are very easily lost in translation here.  

Since these practicums were open-ended, I decided to present a lesson on diabetes, a disease that I’m familiar with and also that a third of Pohnpeian adults have.  Interesting and applicable: check.  I had students brainstorm all the food that they had eaten the previous day and then I lambasted their choices.  Just kidding; but I did describe the health risks to eating foods with highly processed sugars like rice and desserts while encouraging local, complex carb foods like taro, breadfruit, and bananas.  It seemed like a lot of the students were not aware that food choices even mattered, so I’m hoping I had an impact!  I won’t bore you with the science details (I only do that to my students!!), but I had a pretty cool activity where students acted as insulin molecules and receptors.  When they were healthy, the receptors were able to create a puzzle on the chalkboard (representing healthy functioning) and when I gave them diabetes (insert diabolical laugh here), the puzzle was scrambled and incomplete.  Since I’ll be teaching math, it’s too bad that I can’t reuse this lesson; but I hope to eventually start-up or help out with some kind of diabetes awareness program on the island. 

Afterwards, we went to a large luncheon with all of the DOE employees on the island.  We were specially recognized and each given ENORMOUS baskets filled with fresh fruit, fresh fish, breadfruit, candies, drinks, cookies, chips, hotdogs, Spam, Ramen - literally anything you can think of.  It really speaks to the incredible Pohnpeian generosity that I have been witness to for the past three weeks and have yet to wrap my head around.  I realize that I just finished talking about all the diabetes on the island, but gestures such as this have more to do with making sure that every single thing is provided for a guest than with filling or fattening them up.  

I also got to meet my future coworkers and the principal of my school.  Again, it was such a warm welcome!  After meeting our future coworkers and principal of our school, Gabrielle and I, along with the volunteers for the other high schools, were invited to drink sakau with the DOE staff.  It was nice to sit amongst the rest of our coworkers and loosen up over some especially strong kava.  Certainly not something you’d see in the states, but that’s why I like it here!  Now I know that I’ll have a pretty awesome staff to work with and learn from for the next year.

To explain the origin of my phrase, the Vacation Trap, I’ve included pictures taken from our group’s visit to Ant Atoll about ten miles away.  Enjoy!

An entrance to Ant Atoll.  We caught a fish in the water here that we fried up on the beach.

The visibility in the water was insane here.  It looked like we were floating on glass and could crash through to the coral at any time.

Preparing to dock the boat.

One of my favorite pictures from the trip.  This was the small coral that was near where we hooked up the boat.

Ant lagoon's beautiful baby blue waters.  Surprisingly, the beach was clear of whining babies, volleyball nets, and trash left behind by mobs of summer beachgoers.

A coconut that I single-handedly climbed a coconut tree to retrieve!  After I opened it with a machete, I could not have felt any manlier.

The second place we snorkeled.  The reef was much larger and the incoming tide made the water very clear.

Some of the other volunteers posing for a shot.

Me trying to see how far down I could get.