Alyssia
Psychology Undergraduate |
Alyssia
Psychology Undergraduate |
Thursday 1/12/23 On Thursday morning it rained so hard! There was flooding. The cohort headed to the coffee shop to grab a quick breakfast before heading to Tres Mariposa Montessori. I got soaked on the way there! When I got to the shop my socks were so wet it could have rung them out! I ordered the peanut butter banana toast and a strawberry banana smoothie. They call it the Besito at the coffee shop. After a quick breakfast, we all loaded into our taxi and went to the school. That morning we got to do one on one interviews with the lead guides at the Montessori school. Since im not doing research that’s related to schooling systems, I didn’t have any specific questions for the guides, so I just got to listen in on others interviews and I learned a lot about how Montessori is different than traditional schooling. I also learned that many of the guides we interviewed had college degrees which differed from what we were told about traditional schools and only needing eighth grade to become a teacher. Each interview took a little while because the women we were interviewing spoke English and Spanish, and there were so many questions they had to answer. All of us girls are doing different research so we each have different sets of questions we have to ask which is also time consuming. After doing meetings with all the guides, we came back as a group to get ready for our host lunches. Anna and I walked to our host moms house and were greeted by her children in the yard. Even though it was a school day, because it had rained so bad, the streets were flooded and the children couldn’t get to school. In the Dominican, many children walk to and from school so lots of rain makes it hard for them. But, since the children were home we were able to talk in English with them. Our host moms oldest child Johnnyson talked to us about what school at Coral is like. We told him about the Buffalo Bills, and I asked if he had ever seen football (Futbol Americano). He said that he had seen a few clips on Instagram and that he sometimes plays flag football with his friends. Anna started to ask him about what he wanted to do when he got older. Johnnyson talked about how he really wanted to play soccer professionally, but the Dominican Republic doesn’t have any teams that he knows of. He also talked about opening his own restaurant in the states! We were super excited about that because if his restaurant was serving anything his mother made then we were in!! He was able to translate for us when we needed to talk with his mom, and he even taught us some new Spanish words. His mom wanted us to eat so much that I wanted to say “im trying” when she would say “eat eat eat” (she fed us so much, and I was sooooo full every time I left her house!) Johnnyson taught me that and I used that a lot! Haha! This day our host mom made us a Hatian dish called Ligume. It was very different, and I really liked it! It was hard to understand what ingredients were in it but it was really good. I know it did have eggplant in it and carrots too. We chatted for a bit while we ate and then we headed back to 3MM to take a taxi to Coral school. Once we were at the Coral school Andrea and I paired up to go to our classroom. We began by observing the class doing social studies, and then it was our time to do the lesson we had prepared. Andrea and I went to the front of the room and began to write down some vocabulary in English and Spanish about families and the Family Tree ( El Arbol de Familia) . That day we had the kids repeat vocabulary in English. For example we would say “Abuelo es Grandpa en ingles” and they would have to say the English word “grandpa”. We did this until we got through the basic family members and then we played a game with the students. We would ask them if they had a sister or brother etc. and if they did, they had to stand up. The kids got really engaged and excited when we played this and they seemed proud of their family! Once everyone was standing then we asked some more to get them to all sit down again. After that short game Andrea and I drew our families on the board. The kids were surprised to see how different our families looked from theirs. When I showed them my family I put 2 mothers on the board along with a father and they seemed a little confused but they didn’t seem to mind it at the same time. To end our lesson we had the kids draw out what their family looks like and label their family members in English. The children kept approaching us with proud looks on their faces when they showed us their drawings. It was really fun and I was excited to do it again the next day. We took up the second half of their day with our lesson, so by the time we had finished it was time to go home. Us Buffalo girls hopped on the bus to leave. This bus ride was particularly interesting because the door to the bus wouldn’t close! So some of my fellow cohort girls were siting right behind and open door that they could fall out of at any second! It was crazy! But we all made it back home safely. When we walked through the doors I went straight upstairs and rested in the air conditioning for about an hour before going back down to eat dinner. For dinner that night we had mac and cheese, grilled cheese and pineapple. Then some of our cohort girls came over to work on getting our lunch host gifts together. Anna and I got our host mom some really nice stuff for the kitchen ( will go into detail later). Andrea was over and we decided to get a headstart on Fridays lesson at Coral. We learned the head shoulders knees and toes song in Spanish so we could sing with the kids. The girls left our house after and then I wrote my first blog and went to bed. My takeaway from this day was talking with Johnnyson. Seeing that he has aspirations and dreams just like we do really made me happy. I loved to hear about what he wanted to accomplish in his life and I really hope he gets the opportunity to fulfill those dreams. Friday 1/13/23
Friday was an exciting day because it was the last day to our first full week of work! We started at Cabarete Coffee like we do every morning. The bus picks us up there. We loaded the bus and headed to Tres Mariposa Montessori. There we finished the rest of our observations. Anna and I observed the 3–6-year-olds and the 1–3-year-old. In Montessori they teach kids basic life skills like dish washing, cleaning up after yourself etc. When we observed the 1-3 yr. old’s, I saw one of them take a child-sized mop and mop around the classroom. Nobody asked the child to do this either, he did it on his own! After observing, Anna and I started talking and we definitely got closer with one another. It was nice to sit and talk with another girl in the cohort. We started to gather for the outside activities and Janinna and I decided to play with the kids. We played a game of tag and we each had a flag on our backs. Other players had to run and try to rip the flag off. If they did you were out! We played a few rounds with the kids. They also have a rope swing there. Grace and I decided to try it out. The first time I swung, I did alright. But as soon as our professors showed up to take pictures I fell really hard. I laughed it off but I was really embarrassed. This was the last day we would be visiting our host families, so Anna and I brought our presents and gifts with us to the school. Once we made it to Kerlande’s home we gave her our gifts and she was extremely grateful. It felt nice to give back to someone who, without knowing us, welcomed us into her home and fed us delicious Haitian meals. Her family became our family. She made us Sopa that day (Soup). We asked her for the recipe and she had us take a photo of the dish to reference. It was such good soup!!! It had plantains in it and carrots. It also had a type of dumpling dough and that was good too! Kerlande taught us some Creole words as well. She speaks Creole because she’s from Haiti and that’s what they speak there. She taught us what thank you is- Mesi. She also taught us Bon which means Bon appetite. These Creole words are shortened versions of French. I found out that there’s a ton of French influence in Haiti because they didn’t declare their independence from France until 1804, so the roots of the language was mostly French. It neared time for us to leave Kerlande’s house for the last time. We took pictures with her and we exchanged numbers so we could always keep in touch. It was very bittersweet. We went to Coral for our last time as well. This time Andrea and I were more prepared to teach our activity for the kids. We settled on teaching them parts of the body for this lesson. The teacher helped us to prep the board with big white paper so we could draw on it. We drew a body and began labeling the Spanish parts like hair, head, mouth, stomach, feet, etc. We taught the kids what each part was in English. While we did this, I noticed how focused the kids became and they seemed so excited to participate. The usual classroom climate was not like this, it was very chaotic and challenging to observe because there wasn’t much order in the classroom. After we had the children repeat the English words to us and we tried it a few times, we decided to play a game. In this game we would tell the kids to point to a part of their body in English. For example “A Punta a head” or “point to your head”. We did this until we got through the whole body and the kids loved it! They giggled through the whole thing. That game was quick, but they seemed to enjoy it! To end our activity, we taught the kids head, shoulders, knees and toes in English. We did the song twice and it was really fun to see the kids so excited! At the end of our visit we sat with the principal while she answered some questions for other girls in the cohorts research. When we left Coral we went back to the houses to have a girls night! We sat around with drinks and talked for hours! We even got a noise complaint. OOPSIES! I feel like I really stepped out of my comfort zone to teach because while I do work in a daycare, I don’t lesson plan or lead teach. That was my biggest take away from the day.
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AuthorHi! I am currently studying psychology at Buffalo State College! I hope to be a clinical child psychologist in the future. I love to spend time with my friends and family and I love taking naps! You’ll catch Me on the couch every Sunday for the Buffalo Bills game! Im always busy learning or trying new things! :) Archives
February 2023
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