It's been a month

I can’t believe it has already been a month since I left for Martinique. It seems like just yesterday I left and each day seems to go by faster than the last. Everyday seems to be better than the last. It took a while to get adjusted to life here maybe longer than I expected, but I’ve really begun to enjoy my experience. I’ll write a couple of updates because it has been a while since my last long post. So I’m going to write about the schools again. Since my first week I’ve had more freedom in my curriculum and I’ve been taking over the classes by myself. It has been fun to have control over my own classes and to get to know my kids more. Teaching has been kind of slow because I’ve been to so many different classrooms with different groups of kids. As such I’ve only been able to do introductions with most of the kids in light of the strike that happened last week. Although the kids like to talk a lot to their neighbors, they’ve been pretty open about talking when the times come. I’ve been asking them pretty simple questions like ‘what’s your name?,’ ‘How old are you?,’ ‘Who is your favorite musician?,’ ‘What’s your favorite TV show or Movie?,’ What is your favorite hobby?’ I went around to each student in all of my classes and asked them these questions so I could get a sense of who they were and the things that interested them. Hearing their responses, I was surprised at the low level of their English proficiency because many had studied English for close to ten years. Maybe it was my accent or they were just intimidated by having a native speaker in class, but some students struggled at times. I encouraged them and each student had a chance to respond. The questions were ones I knew they had seen before so they were able to handle them despite the occasional difficulties. When they did have problems it was with questions they weren’t prepared for. A handful of classes were lucky enough to have me ask them what they thought about the retirement reforms and the strikes. When I asked them why they agreed or disagreed with the decision to change the retirement age, some had a hard time thinking on their feet. Others showed a pretty good handling on English and provided good responses. What I’ve realized through asking these questions was that most students need confidence and a willingness to speak. When they had confidence and were willing to talk they showed a good ability. So that will be my goal in the coming weeks, give the students confidence and encourage them to practice speaking. With those two things, they will make a lot of progress.

Back to the questions that I asked earlier, I’ll give the responses that most of the students gave so that you can have an idea of the interests of my students. The majority of students were 16 or 17 years old and had studied English for 7 to 10 years. Most students liked Rap and R’n’B as well as Reggae, Dancehall and Zouk (local music from Martinique). Many of the favorite artists that I heard were Rhianna, Snoop Dogg, Eminem, and Alicia Keys. In addition, kids really like Bob Marley, a group called Vybz Kartel and many American pop artists. As for TV, the students love the Simpsons, Desperate Houswives and Pimp My Ride. Another favorite was a Brazilian show ‘El Diablo.’ Kids also like My Wife and Kids, Dr; House and a plethora of other American shows. As for movies, Fast and the Furious topped the list for many kids in addition to American Pie and Saw. For fun, most boys played soccer and everyone played some sort of sport, swimming, basketball, track, and handball. Most kids loved the internet and liked watching TV. Most loved music and either loved dancing or singing. Hearing their responses it became apparent to me that they were near identical to American high schoolers in terms of their interests. They held more in common with their American peers than they realized. They are also big time consumers of American pop culture which came as a surprise for me. I’ve spent so much time in the counter-culture movement that it’s bizarre to step into a world of American pop culture consumers. So I’m excited to show them that there is more to America than just pop culture. I’m looking forward to the coming weeks with the students and encouraging them to speak. I think that they enjoyed me and I hope that continues. I hope that I’ll be able to help the students and I think they’ll make progress. It’ll be a fun few months.