NICOLE
Elementary Education Undergraduate |
NICOLE
Elementary Education Undergraduate |
As I have just experienced six hours of university instruction and have three more hours to go tonight, it is undeniably apparent that I am no longer in the Dominican Republic. I am not in the warm Caribbean weather and no longer speak broken Spanish in my everyday outings. I do not spend my afternoons playing games and teaching lessons with 2nd grade kiddos. I am, thus, back to my regular routine of work - school - work - school - rest - repeat. At first, arriving back in the United States, I felt offput. It seemed so strange, that first day home, to drink water out of the faucet and put paper into the toilet bowl. Driving my car for the first time in three weeks was an incredibly strange experience. These simple behaviors, once instinctual, were out of practice. My professors had warned us of this culture shock, which I definitely experienced upon arrival in Buffalo. But now, two days later, these simple actions seem normal once again. I hope that I do not forget the connections that I came to know during my time abroad. I want to keep, fresh in my mind, my experience as a Spanish language learner. I don’t want to forget the faces of my 2nd grade students or Mariposa teachers. Yet, I am afraid that I will. Back here in Buffalo, surrounded by familiarity, I very well could allow these ideas to fade in my mind. However, every day at Buff State, I see reminders of my trip. My classes this semester are filled with my DR peers, who I will happily see every Monday and Wednesday over the next few months. Our shared experiences, I hope, will remain in the forefront of our minds every week. As I wrap up this blog, I am going to include many pictures from my trip. If my words and memory cannot keep every detail alive, at least these photographs will.
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It is currently 6:41 PM and I have approximately twenty more hours left before my plane takes off to head back to the US. I could do lots of things in a twenty hour time span. I could: (a.) walk to the end of the beach and back fifteen times (b.) sit in on six of Mary Jane’s Spanish classes (c.) watch far too many episodes on Netflix Now, obviously, I will do none of these things. I will spend lots of that twenty hours sleeping. Some time will, of course, be devoted to transportation and packing. So, while twenty hours seems like a lot of time, I do not have much time left in the DR. In retrospect, I feel as if my time here was beneficial to me as an educator. I became aware of some of the feelings that language learning students feel in an unfamiliar classroom. I was able to not only tour but also teach in local schools themselves. And I improved my Spanish language abilities tenfold. All of these facts, in combination, deemed success for the professional aspects of this trip.
After listening to my peers reflect on their experiences here in the DR, I became aware that I did not personally develop in the same ways that they did. They talked about being struck with culture shock and needing an outlet to focus their newfound energy into. My lack of culture shock could certainly be attributed to the fact that I have travelled much more than most of the others. But for the latter matter, I could not automatically figure out why I didn't need an outlet. I consider myself to be logical and realistic, but not to the point of not needing to apply my experiences to my own life. But then I figured out why. The goals and actions of the Mariposa DR Foundation, focusing on building the self esteem of girls and young women, are just like those of my summer camp’s. I already have an outlet built into my life. When I am given the opportunity to mentor the same girls summer after summer, I can build the same relationships that the Mariposa staff do with their girls. Because of this, I do not feel the need to find a new program to work with because I already have an amazing one. This just goes to show that I didn't need to travel to another country to influence the lives of others. I already have the chance to do that 45 minutes from my house. So, with twenty hours left, I do not know if I will ever return here to Cabarete. I hope that I can bring my family and friends here, so they can have a more real understanding of the stories I am bound to tell them in the near future. But these might be my last twenty hours. Craziness. For our second activity at the CORAL School, my co-teacher and I created a BINGO game to play with the students. We drew pictures of different fruits in each box and called out both the English and Spanish names for each fruit during the game. We hoped this would reinforce the content that we taught on Tuesday. Our boards looked like this: As we began the lesson, my co-teacher and I became instantly aware that the students didn't really know how to play BINGO. Many of them raised their hands to indicate that they had played the game before when we asked, but very few of them understood the concept during the activity. Thus, we had to spend a good chunk of time working with each individual student to fix their boards in accordance with the fruits we called out.
However, as we went around to each student, we began to notice a pattern. The students were placing multiple pieces of paper onto each fruit square in accordance with the colors of the fruits. For example, the students placed green, orange, and brown markers on top of the picture of the mango. My co-teacher associated this with critical thinking skills, with which I agree. We had not intended to have the students do this step, but they were recalling the fruit and color lesson from yesterday and applying it to today's activity. In the end, their interpretation of the lesson was more successful than our original directions were. Now, this newfound activity was likely due to a few factors. They students (1) did not know how to play BINGO from the start and (2) were likely confused by our broken Spanish directions. If this same lesson had been given to a group of students with which I shared a common language, this critical thinking component would have been obsolete. Yet, based on my language barrier, the students got more out of the lesson. It will be interesting to see what tomorrow’s lesson will bring. Today was my second day working in the CORAL School’s 2nd grade classroom. Now, for anyone who knows me, this grade level is not my forte. I even switched subject concentrations for my major to include a middle school certification due to my interest in that age group. At any of my work places, whether in my teaching positions or at camp, I interact most often with very small children (ex. toddlers) or much older ones (ex. 13 year-olds). However, fate has a funny way of playing out, so 2nd grade it is. At first, this placement made me nervous. I was not familiar with the traits of this age group. My Spanish skills are beginner at best, so I could not follow all of the teacher’s lesson. Additionally, my co-teacher from Buff State was apprehensive about her abilities in these same skill areas. So I did not feel inherently natural when approaching my lesson today. So, my co-teacher and I planned a color and fruit activity to complete with the students today. We reviewed the Spanish and English words for the colors on the chalkboard and out loud. After that, we asked the students to draw pictures of fruit. They then glued tiny construction paper squares onto the fruit, mosaic-style. The students then labeled the colors with English words. These are some examples of the students’ work: Both my co-teacher and I were very happy with the students’ results. Each student, all twenty plus of them, exuded excited personas during and after the lesson. We collected the drawings today to photograph, and they begged us to return them tomorrow. At the end of the lesson, each student was able to say each of the colors of the rainbow out loud in English. For a 45 minute lesson with minimal supplies, I would say this activity was a success.
As a child, I studied Spanish in my elementary school. I was still pretty basic in my conversational skills but I was better than most of my peers in grammar and reading comprehension. When transitioning to my new high school as a 14 years-old, however, I chose to switch to French. Some people in my family thought this was strange, since I had such a good background in Spanish. However, after meeting a seemingly-scary Spanish teacher on my shadow day at Nardin, I though French would be a better choice. So I studied French for four and a half years.
Also during high school, I took Latin for one year. In retrospect I did not get a whole lot out of my Latin classes. At the time, I had been planning to study science and thought that the Latin would help me learn the botanical names. However, that class focused on other aspects of Latin so I remember nearly none of the original content. While in the United States, I mentioned part of this narrative to one of my professors. She knew that I was coming to the Dominican Republic, and she expressed how strange it was for me not to be able to speak with my future students. I agreed that this would be a barrier but thought that the dominance of English as a world-wide method of communication would make interactions possible. To boost the Spanish abilities of our student group, our professors arranged for us to take Spanish classes here in the DR. Last week, I was taught Spanish by the DR Mariposa Foundation’s literacy teacher, Mary Jane. I had anticipated that I would learn basic grammar and conjugations, as had been the norm in my early Spanish, French, and Latin classes of the past. However, Mary Jane took a different approach. Throughout each day’s three hour class, Mary Jane forced us to speak in Spanish almost exclusively and focused on usable phrases and vocabulary. In this way, Mary Jane made the Spanish that we learned relevant to our time here in the DR. Phrases like “Cuánto cuanto esa” and “yo quiero” became part of my daily conversations on the street. I had probably learned the equivalent of these phrases in my previous language classes but they had never been so necessary for me personally. Based on my experiences in all of the aforementioned language classes, it has become increasingly apparent that it will be important for me to make my lessons relevant to the lives and mentalities of my students. Mary Jane’s approach was so effective for me personally, and I hope to emulate her effectiveness in my own practice. Whenever I enter a new classroom for the first time, I try to stay objective and observe my new surroundings rather than jumping in straight away. I blame this on my perpetually logic nature, for better or for worse. Over the past three days, I have had the opportunity to tour five different schools and found the following things to be interesting:
CORAL (private):
CADIN (private):
Punta Cabarete School (public):
Puerto Canta (public):
Salome Arena (public):
All of the schools:
Now, for anyone who has read all of my notes, it is inherently apparent that photos would enrich this posting. I agree completely. However, out of respect for the students and teachers at these schools, I have taken only a few photos. As an outside, foreign observer, I want to be respectful of the requests of our guides, and this is one of their main ones. In writing this blog post, I have tried to relate these observations to my own experiences for the sake of clarity. However, I was unable to do this. My private high school was over ten times more expensive than the expensive private school here. And I have never struggled in the learning process before. My schooling experience was, thus, vastly different from that of most other students. By being an educated adult, sitting in a classroom of twelve year-olds and understanding only 5% of the lesson, I feel humbled. From the beginning of this trip, I knew that I have a logical mentality that few others do. I have usually associated this with my personal dedication to classroom activities. As an educator, I have tried to really empathize with struggling students before, but until these past few days I had never been in that same boat. I was still able to objectively observe the teacher and students despite my lack of language skills, but I was unable to comprehend the lesson. How in the world, then, can a child be expected to do the same? It simply blows my mind. In preparation for this trip, my family asked me the infamous two questions that travelers get so often: “aren’t you worried about getting sick?” and “what are you actually going to do that whole time?” Well, to answer the first question, I did get sick. No, it was not malaria as my hypochondriac aunt tried to convince me that I would catch. Despite WebMD’s best efforts to prove me otherwise, I have been suffering from simple digestive issues for the past few days. As someone who gets motion sick quite often, this is not new to me but is definitely annoying. Thankfully, I think this issue is now resolved (knock on wood!) Now, the second part of this question may prove to be of much more interest to the general population. What am I actually doing in the DR? Yes, I have taken time to go on excursions and to relax. But that is not my main focus here. Nearly everyday, I have been visiting an organization called the Mariposa DR Foundation. They are our main partner here on the island. The simplest way to describe this organization is to call it an after-school enrichment program. The Foundation’s mission can best be described in the following video: I myself watched this video before my trip down here but did not truly grasp the breadth of its clarity and truth. So often I see videos like this, promoting seemingly-good causes from cultures other than my own. Seeing these once- foreign and now-familiar faces, I recognize my jaded demeanor. I had no idea how Tricia, the director of this program, would embody such a go-getter attitude. And the girls, a few of whom have assisted in my Spanish class, exemplify the positive attitudes of this organization.
So, to put it simply, I have spent the majority of my time thus far interacting with the Mariposa girls. We have played games together and reviewed Spanish lessons. I doubt I have taught them anything at this point, but they have certainly taught me many things. I am hesitant to detail them now, so I will wait until I come to more concrete conclusions. But it's without a doubt that that my worldview is altered from that of last week. This trip has made me think back to just before my freshman year of high school. It was the summer of 2010 and I was excited to be attending a new school with new classmates in a new environment. I had just gotten my reading list sent to me, excited as always to delve into a new stack of books. I was placed into Skoog’s English and could not wait for September to come. My first selection from that list was Julia Alvarez’s In the Time of the Butterflies.
Now, for anyone who does not know, this is not just any novel. It is historical fiction, one of my favorite genres, and based off of true events and people from the Dominican Republic during the brutal reign of a dictator, Trujilio. The book details the lives of the Mirabal sisters, now recognized as progressive revolutionaries. I am not going to spoil the plot of this book, but this basic background is essential to my trip now in 2017. So, today, my cohorts and I journeyed two hours winding around a mountain to visit some sites described in In the Time of the Butterflies. We saw the house that Dede lived in until her death a few years ago. And we saw the possessions and old house that the Mirabal Mariposas lived in until their abrupt deaths. They are now in pristine condition, maintained in museum quality. I must say that I've always enjoyed the story of the Mirabal sisters and its reading came at a pivotal point in my life. But it was not until today that I realized their efforts were so recent. Dede died less than three years ago, and the Mariposas might have still been alive if they had not spoke out against the government. After years of travel, it still amazes me when history comes alive. As a well-travelled person, I knew that I would not experience the same level of culture shock that my peers would. The cows here in the DR remind me of the goats in India. And the beach is identical, albeit the waves, to the waters of Grand Caymen. The street culture, in this ways, feels familiar to me. It is not like my home by any means. But it is not so foreign either.
But, despite this notion, today was unexpected for a few reasons: 1.) Bug bites --> For years, I have lived in the woods all summer and have worn no bug spray. In those seven weeks a year, I get maybe four bites in total. Today alone, on our trip to the countryside, I got 18 bites on my ankles alone. This must be the karma that was much overdue, granted to me via the sacrifices of my lovely C7H comrades. These Dominican bugs must love me and my blood. So unexpected. 2. Language barrier --> On our trip to the countryside, I got to meet with the family of the Mariposa Foundation's director. My demeanor on our visit was unexpected. I thought I would be reserved but inquisitive like I normally am. But instead, I fell silent. My inability to speak Spanish really shocked my psyche. I did not like that feeling at all. This just goes to show how important it is for me to (1.) study languages and (2.) take time to communicate with those who may not understand me. I am excited for what else these next two weeks will show me. There will likely be more unexpected realizations to come! There are only five days left until we take off for Cabarete! Now, being me, I started packing nearly a month ago. I am what some people call cheap - but I call frugal - and have decided to travel carry-on only. For United Airlines, this means that I can take a small wheeled suitcase and a backpack. As a well-seasoned traveler, I thought this would be no problem. However, this has not been the case for this trip. I have had to fit classroom outfits, beach attire, and casual wear all into a small space. Clearly, I wanted to take more than could fit. So, after much effort, I have paired my wares down. I eliminated a large stack of unnecessary items and am satisfied with what I can bring. The only items to add in are my electronics, their chargers, and a folder of papers. Not too bad, I think! So, there are only a few things I need to do between today, Thursday, and the morning of our flight on Tuesday, January 3rd:
1.) Create a bilingual picture book to use with my Spanish tutor --> I think that I will base it off of my dog, Henry, and his misadventures as a troublemaker in my house. I can also discuss the importance of pets in American culture, which I hear is very different than in Dominincan culture. 2.) Do laundry --> There are one or two items that did not make it into the suitcase that need to. 3.) Print out forms --> For my research project, entitled "Student Knowledge of Environmental Factors in the Dominican Republic", I need to collect my IRB-approved informed consent, parental consent, and assent forms. 4.) Pack some snacks --> This may not be essential for everyone, but I need to snack when I fly. It's non-negotiable. Those are all the things that are pressing on my mind now. I am excited for all the knowledge that I will gain by interacting with students in the DR. I hope that my experiences on this trip will make me a more well-rounded educator, ready to work with students of all kinds. I know that trips like these, with college students travelling to a tropical foreign country, often have a tainted edge. But this is no "Spring Break" for me. I see this as a professional, educational experience and I am ready to learn! |
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