Once On This Island...: An Epic Hike, Model School, and SITE PLACEMENTS!

Last Saturday almost all of the trainees hiked to the top of Sokehs Island, which was absolutely amazing! It was pretty tough hiking with something like 100% humidity. When we were about halfway up it started pouring rain, so we had to trudge through the mud the rest of the way. We were all absolutely DRENCHED by the time we reached the top, but as soon as we got there the rain let up to give us a stunning view of Pohnpei.

Also on Sokehs Islands are some old Japanese guns from WWII.

This week we began “model school,” which is our opportunity to practice teaching English in a Micronesian classroom. It’s a two-week summer school program for 5^th to 8^th graders from Kolonia and the surrounding areas. In theory, each of us was going to be paired with a Pohnpeian co-teacher, but since there weren’t enough that volunteered, a few of us were paired with other volunteers.

The first day of model school couldn’t have been more of a disaster. First of all, my coteacher had decided to leave Peace Corps over the weekend, so 30 minutes before class began Sam and I teamed up. Neither of us have much teaching experience, so we were really nervous. We pretty much had to improvise our three-hour lesson since we hadn’t had any time to prepare ahead of time. We really struggled with the cultural differences and the shyness of the students here. They’re not used to any sort of interactive or creative assignments, so every activity has to be very guided and structured. But each day we’ve been improving (the last two days have gone REALLY well).

We have 11 girls in our class in 5^th and 6^th grade. They’re all super sweet and quiet, but they really like to laugh. We’re working on writing stories using the past tense (gah, so many irregular verbs in English! So impossible to teach!), reading science texts about the moon, plant life cycles, and dolphins, and solving math word problems. The math section is everybody’s favorite – they all love math!

And now for the big news – site placements! No one has been able to think about anything else all week! Since I knew I was going to be on Pohnpei (for medical reasons), I didn’t have the same level of suspense as everyone else, but the anticipation was still overwhelming. I’ll be in a small village (for safety reasons, I’m not allowed to give my specific location on a blog) and teaching 6^th-8^th grade English at the local elementary school. The classes will most likely be about 40 students each! Since several villages all feed into this school, it’s one of the largest schools on the island. I’m pumped to finally have a concrete idea of where I’m going, but it’s sad to see our group split up. The Chuuk and Palau volunteers leave in two weeks, and we won’t see them again until next May! I wish we could visit each other’s islands, but United has a monopoly and plane tickets are ridiculously expensive.