Students working on grammar worksheets at ESDM Elementary School
It’s hard to believe, but we are winding up our education program for this school year. In the past few weeks we have focused on the 8th graders as they have their big high school entrance exam this coming Friday. We will spend another week working with our 6th and 7th graders before calling it a year. History shows that once you get to mid-May the schools here are pretty much checked out, infatuated with practicing for graduation ceremonies which are a huge deal. Picture the scene – spending weeks preparing for a ceremony to celebrate the accomplishments of graduating 8th graders – when many of them are reading at a 3rd grade level or below. Frustrate you a bit? Remember – if you don’t make things funny, you will get a heart attack.
As we are approaching the end of our program this school year we have been reflecting on what went right, and what we want to do differently in the future. I’ll address the latter first. Originally, MAHI International planned to only have one or two schools in our program, focusing on truly making a difference there. When we brought our plan to the Department of Education last August, they implored us to take on seven schools, all of which were among the poorest performing and had new principals. After two months we dropped two schools due to a lack of support on their part for our program. When we gave our initial report on the state of the schools and the lackluster (to put it mildly) reading level amongst the students, we received negative feedback for dropping the two schools. The logic was “adding is positive and subtracting is negative.” We tried explaining how all we had was Mr. B, myself, a car, and a modest budget for fuel and copies. As a result, we argued it would be best for us to concentrate our resources to make a deeper impact. Some understood, some did not.
About a month and a half ago, we dropped another one of our schools after a consistent lack of support. More than once we rolled up to the school and found no students there, and once we were in the middle of teaching and they rung the bell ending school for the day. Why? The principal had to go to class in the afternoon and the faculty meeting had to happen at 11:00. Here’s the logic – cancel school for 300+ students for the day, so one man can go to class later. Deep breaths now. Remember – make things funny. Believe it or not, that wasn’t the final straw. The school really needs our help so we kept trying, but after continued indifference from the school we had to sever ties.
So here we are at four schools, all of which are spread across Pohnpei. While there is significant travel time (our farthest school is about a 75 minute drive through pothole ridden roads), we believe it is important to serve schools far away from Kolonia, as the Kolonia schools are the best and receive the most support. Even now however we are still having trouble with many of our school administrators and teachers not supporting the program. We have come to the conclusion that next year we will focus on two schools, and perhaps only one – choosing schools with principals who wholeheartedly support our program and teachers who see our instruction as an opportunity to learn new material and teaching techniques and not a 30-minute break.
Beyond narrowing down our number of schools next year, we are excited at the prospect of receiving 40 iPads to use in the classroom. You might remember our original plan to bring iPads to use in the classroom this year. Without going into the details we applied for a grant to a very receptive organization back in December, and like everything in island life, have waited a long time. Long story short, the prospects are very bright that we will receive the iPads and three protective cases for them shortly! It’s obviously disappointing we weren’t able to use them in the schools this year but we can only move forward now. While I might not be here to witness it, I’m super excited to see pictures of our students with iPads in their hands!
As I approach my last month on Pohnpei, I have been reflecting on all the work MAHI International has done as an organization around our education program this year – all the copies made, all the trips Mr. B and I took around the island, all the hours we spent imploring our students to speak in English, and yes, all the hairs we have collectively pulled out of our heads in frustration. I am now forced to ask the question – have we really made a difference?
This is a tough question. I’m first forced to look at this analytically – what educational gains have our students made? I can unequivocally state that our program has resulted in widespread gains amongst our students. When we first asked students to write a complete sentence, the majority were dumbfounded. The idea of capitalizing the first letter in every sentence and ending it with a period was completely foreign. We then worked our way to the difference between proper nouns and common nouns, then present tense and past tense, and on and on. We still see sentences starting without a capitalized letter, and “cuz” instead of “because,” but they are now the exception, not the norm. Besides their writing, overall their reading comprehension has significantly progressed, along with their vocabulary and phonics skills. So analytically, the answer is yes, we have made a difference. But part of me wants to look deeper. It’s great that their English is better than it was a few months ago but there are still so many problems and so much room for progress. The question still stands – did we really make a difference?
I was talking to my friend Ap a couple days ago, a tremendous Peace Corps volunteer serving on the outer island of Pakin. You might remember very early on in my fundraising last year I was raising money to put solar panels on Pakin. More on the progress of that project in the next post or two. Ap is a teacher at the school there and we got to talking about the progress our students have made. He said something I found very profound, and holds a lot of truth – at the end of the day, education is about faith. You have to believe in something that you can’t see – even if there doesn’t appear to be progress, education is a marathon, not a sprint. Mr. B joined us and reflected on his career in education. Thousands of students passed through his classroom and under his leadership as principal. He explained how he sees his students prospering all over Pohnpei, working in great jobs. He might not have been able to see his influence on graduation day (no matter how lavish the Pohnpeians made the ceremony), but he can undoubtedly see it now. (Although he would be much too humble to acknowledge he did anything extraordinary).
Education isn’t like a business where there are indisputable, unambiguous numbers which reveal a company’s level of success. Sure, you can show an increase in test results, higher graduation rates and send more students to college. All of these are measurements of success which hold some validity. Ultimately however, the true impact of education extends far beyond numbers on a page. By entering these classrooms, exposing them to more English and encouraging them to read, work hard and aim higher, I believe we have truly made a difference. I gotta have faith in that.
As we are approaching the end of our program this school year we have been reflecting on what went right, and what we want to do differently in the future. I’ll address the latter first. Originally, MAHI International planned to only have one or two schools in our program, focusing on truly making a difference there. When we brought our plan to the Department of Education last August, they implored us to take on seven schools, all of which were among the poorest performing and had new principals. After two months we dropped two schools due to a lack of support on their part for our program. When we gave our initial report on the state of the schools and the lackluster (to put it mildly) reading level amongst the students, we received negative feedback for dropping the two schools. The logic was “adding is positive and subtracting is negative.” We tried explaining how all we had was Mr. B, myself, a car, and a modest budget for fuel and copies. As a result, we argued it would be best for us to concentrate our resources to make a deeper impact. Some understood, some did not.
About a month and a half ago, we dropped another one of our schools after a consistent lack of support. More than once we rolled up to the school and found no students there, and once we were in the middle of teaching and they rung the bell ending school for the day. Why? The principal had to go to class in the afternoon and the faculty meeting had to happen at 11:00. Here’s the logic – cancel school for 300+ students for the day, so one man can go to class later. Deep breaths now. Remember – make things funny. Believe it or not, that wasn’t the final straw. The school really needs our help so we kept trying, but after continued indifference from the school we had to sever ties.
So here we are at four schools, all of which are spread across Pohnpei. While there is significant travel time (our farthest school is about a 75 minute drive through pothole ridden roads), we believe it is important to serve schools far away from Kolonia, as the Kolonia schools are the best and receive the most support. Even now however we are still having trouble with many of our school administrators and teachers not supporting the program. We have come to the conclusion that next year we will focus on two schools, and perhaps only one – choosing schools with principals who wholeheartedly support our program and teachers who see our instruction as an opportunity to learn new material and teaching techniques and not a 30-minute break.
Beyond narrowing down our number of schools next year, we are excited at the prospect of receiving 40 iPads to use in the classroom. You might remember our original plan to bring iPads to use in the classroom this year. Without going into the details we applied for a grant to a very receptive organization back in December, and like everything in island life, have waited a long time. Long story short, the prospects are very bright that we will receive the iPads and three protective cases for them shortly! It’s obviously disappointing we weren’t able to use them in the schools this year but we can only move forward now. While I might not be here to witness it, I’m super excited to see pictures of our students with iPads in their hands!
As I approach my last month on Pohnpei, I have been reflecting on all the work MAHI International has done as an organization around our education program this year – all the copies made, all the trips Mr. B and I took around the island, all the hours we spent imploring our students to speak in English, and yes, all the hairs we have collectively pulled out of our heads in frustration. I am now forced to ask the question – have we really made a difference?
This is a tough question. I’m first forced to look at this analytically – what educational gains have our students made? I can unequivocally state that our program has resulted in widespread gains amongst our students. When we first asked students to write a complete sentence, the majority were dumbfounded. The idea of capitalizing the first letter in every sentence and ending it with a period was completely foreign. We then worked our way to the difference between proper nouns and common nouns, then present tense and past tense, and on and on. We still see sentences starting without a capitalized letter, and “cuz” instead of “because,” but they are now the exception, not the norm. Besides their writing, overall their reading comprehension has significantly progressed, along with their vocabulary and phonics skills. So analytically, the answer is yes, we have made a difference. But part of me wants to look deeper. It’s great that their English is better than it was a few months ago but there are still so many problems and so much room for progress. The question still stands – did we really make a difference?
I was talking to my friend Ap a couple days ago, a tremendous Peace Corps volunteer serving on the outer island of Pakin. You might remember very early on in my fundraising last year I was raising money to put solar panels on Pakin. More on the progress of that project in the next post or two. Ap is a teacher at the school there and we got to talking about the progress our students have made. He said something I found very profound, and holds a lot of truth – at the end of the day, education is about faith. You have to believe in something that you can’t see – even if there doesn’t appear to be progress, education is a marathon, not a sprint. Mr. B joined us and reflected on his career in education. Thousands of students passed through his classroom and under his leadership as principal. He explained how he sees his students prospering all over Pohnpei, working in great jobs. He might not have been able to see his influence on graduation day (no matter how lavish the Pohnpeians made the ceremony), but he can undoubtedly see it now. (Although he would be much too humble to acknowledge he did anything extraordinary).
Education isn’t like a business where there are indisputable, unambiguous numbers which reveal a company’s level of success. Sure, you can show an increase in test results, higher graduation rates and send more students to college. All of these are measurements of success which hold some validity. Ultimately however, the true impact of education extends far beyond numbers on a page. By entering these classrooms, exposing them to more English and encouraging them to read, work hard and aim higher, I believe we have truly made a difference. I gotta have faith in that.
Teaching 8th Grade at Pohnlangas Elementary School
Recent Pohnpeian rainbow
