Tuesday, May 24th
Today when we got to the school, we had to park in a new spot. The new spot was out of the way of the net ball court because the girls had a game today. We started off with the debugging exercises and again, the kids were able to figure them out quickly. After that, we had the kids work on their projects for the rest of the time. Today wasn’t as tiring as yesterday because the kids pretty much knew what they were doing and how they wanted their games so we didn’t have to think a lot today. I’m pretty sure everyone finished today and then we saved the projects on flash drives so we can give them to teachers to look at. Today was our last day with this class so we exchanged numbers and Instagram names so they can follow us. We were planning on going to Almond beach today and stopping at Mullins beach just for lunch, but we ended up staying at Mullins for tanning and swimming too. For lunch I had a Caesar salad with tempura shrimp and it was really good. After lunch, we changed into our bathing suits and went and set our towels down to tan. After a while the sun got super hot so we went in the water and swam to the floating dock that was out in the middle of the water. It has benches so we can sit on and chill. When we got there we talked for a while and then some other people came and sat with us. The girl was from Australia and the guy was from England. We talked with them and then more people came over. Three boys from England came over and talked with us all. It was really cool talking to them because I got to hear all the different things that’s different/same as America. What was really funny was that they call American college parties the “red cup parties” because we always use red solo cups in the movies at parties and I thought that was funny because we just call them parties. We also learned that in Australia everyone has to vote and if you don’t then you get fined. We were talking about whether or not I am voting for Trump and I said heck no! I also said that I’m moving if he gets elected and we were talking about how a lot of celebrities are saying that. After a while it was just Skylar, me, and the three boys from England and we were all talking about driving age and drinking age in both countries. We all started to get really sunburned so we all went in to get sun block. We stayed at the beach until around 5ish and then left. I knew I had gotten sunburned, but I didn’t realize how bad it was until I got in the shower. I put on a ton of aloe after my shower and put on my PJs. At 7 we had dinner and it was burgers tonight. Selena also made us cupcakes tonight too and they were incredible! We didn’t have to have a meeting tonight because we have a day off tomorrow because the kids that we are teaching will be off campus. I’m pretty sure we are beach hopping and shopping tomorrow. I’ll definitely be putting on more sunscreen tomorrow!
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Tuesday, May 24
Although we are only halfway through our time in Barbados, today felt bittersweet. It was our last day with the first class of students. Even though we’ll see them around the school on Thursday and Friday, we won’t be working with them again. I feel some extra affection for this group of kids because I’ve learned the basics (and I mean the most basic of basics) of Scratch along with them. Before last Friday, I didn’t know what Scratch was; today I learned--and was able to explain--a second way to get objects to move using the arrow keys. Partly because the students were asking questions that were way too complicated for me to answer and partly because I was aware that we only had a few more hours with them, I spent a lot of the morning taking pictures. I wanted to record every smile and high five, every brow furrowed in concentration, every moment of collaborative problem solving. I loved watching the kids work their way through problems, asking questions of each other or the CSG students when they got stuck. And I loved watching our CSG girls turn to each other for troubleshooting advice. After only three days of working together, they have gained a deep understanding of each other’s strengths, and they know who to call on for help when a specific type of question arises. As the girls have discovered, being in the classroom is both fun and exhausting, and we have a full day to rest up before we spend all of Thursday working with a new group of kids. I’m excited to put my little bit of coding knowledge to work, but I’m also nervous about our group splitting into two. On Thursday and Friday, Skylar and Colleen will teach one group of students, while Emma and Christine teach a second group. I will be in the same classroom as Colleen and Skylar, but they will have to be the experts. As an adult and a teacher, I am used to having the answers or to at least knowing how to find them. It makes me feel a little uncomfortable to know that my students are going to run into problems later this week that I will not know how to help them solve. While I wish that I could be of more help to the CSG girls, I hope they feel empowered by the fact that they get to be most knowledgeable people in the room when they only juniors in high school. And I know that when Thursday morning rolls around, this new group of St. Alban’s students and I will both be in very capable hands. Tuesday May 24, 2016 Today we had our last day of teaching with one of the groups. Since Friday, when we first started teaching and working with a group of class 4, there has been a lot of improvement. The determination to learn about scratch was always high everyday with these kids. Today, they finished their projects about Barbados. The kids came up with fantastic and exciting ideas and it was very neat to watch them accomplish their projects! It was a very successful day. The end of class was sad because we wouldn't be teaching them again but it was a very fun and successful time and we will be able to see them around school! Although we are the teachers, I am learning a ton from the students. Whether its learning new things about myself or Barbados! This has been such a great experience so far and I am excited to meet the new group of kids we will be teaching till the end of the trip. We have a day off tomorrow, so we will hopefully shop and go to the beach! Skylar and I will teach a group by ourselves, but with Ms. Davis there, starting on Thursday! I am preparing for that. Although it will be tough, it is manageable and I'm very excited for it! After teaching today we went to a beach that is close by to us. The same beach where we go to swim with the turtles. It was nice to be able to just lay and swim and relax. The teaching is very tiring, therefore the down time is very nice. Skylar bought me a pretty necklace from a guy who was walking around selling them :) I am enjoying myself here! Monday, May 23
This morning we woke up early, got dressed, and just ate breakfast in our apartment because it was quicker than making a full meal. We had cereal. When we got to the school, they were having prayer and announcements. After that, the kids hugged us to say hi and they walked us up to class. When we got to class, we handed out their name tags and they went and got their laptops. Today’s lesson was obviously different then last time. Since we hadn’t had the kids in class since Friday, we decided to do a recap of the last lesson first. Also on Friday’s lesson, some kids weren’t there so we needed to catch them up too. We went over an informative, yet brief recap for everyone. After that, we did some debugging activities where the kids had to figure out what was wrong with the coding in the program. This activity went by really fast because the kids figured it out really quickly; even the kids who weren’t there on Friday figured it out. We then introduced a project that the class will be doing for their actual class. It’s a project to show their Bajan pride since the 50th anniversary of Barbados’ Independence is coming up. We told them they could do whatever they wanted on Scratch and they got super excited. Before we let them go off by themselves, we gave them a few examples so they knew exactly what they could do. After showing them 4 examples that we had made, they went and started their projects. We walked around and helped everyone figure out what they wanted to do and any ideas they had. They all had pretty awesome ideas and they needed help executing them. It was really tiring trying to figure out everything they wanted to do. Some things I didn’t even know how to do so I really had to think. We were all exhausted after teaching today just because we really had to think today. Right after school, we drove to Harrison’s cave and got a tour of the underground cave with stalactites and stalagmites. It was pretty cool. We were so glad that the tour was on a tram and we didn’t have to walk because we were dead tired. When we got back to the house, Colleen and Skylar went to the beach, but I decided to stay in the room because I got so burnt on Sunday that I needed a day out of the sun. Back in the room, I took a nap and just chilled by myself. When Colleen and Skylar came back they took showers and we all hung out and talked. Pretty soon it was time for dinner; tonight Selena cooked us Vegetarian themed. We had pasta, plantains, salad, and a garlic biscuit. Again, it was really good. After dinner, we planned our lesson for tomorrow. We mainly want the kids to work on their projects so we can be there to help them, however a lot of them are already far and we don’t want them to just be sitting around so we decided to do more debugging so they can learn some new stuff. Hopefully all of them can finish tomorrow! Monday, May 23
Another great day in the classroom! And some nice press! Please see http://www.nationnews.com/nationnews/news/81541/programming-hit-st-alban for a quick story about why this is special! Today, the girls spent about half of the three-hour class with puzzles, debugging exercises, learning a few new skills, and reviewing the maze game we made Friday. This helped for two reasons. One, it helped the kids who were out of class last week because of ball games get caught up. And two, it helped reinforce the concepts that were taught last week, but perhaps had not sunk in yet. Interestingly, some of last week’s missing kids caught up extremely quickly, while some of last week’s attendees needed the review, so it was definitely time well spent. Then we introduced their project and showed them a few potential examples to get their creative juices going. Their project is to be something to help celebrate the Barbadian 50th’ anniversary of independence, which happens this year. We gave them ideas like a quiz, a game, a maze where a character could pick up Barbadian objects, a story, or an info page where you’d click on an icon to get more information about a topic. I was a little worried that the Barbados students wouldn’t know what to do with so much freedom, but they were all settled in to their projects within about 5 minutes of our introduction. The plans and enthusiasm were really fun to see. And with five of us in the classroom, plus Mr. McConney from St. Albans, there were plenty of us to help out. We will have to do a better job, however, for the next group. We will split up into two classes on Thursday and Friday, so there will be fewer of us to help when there are questions. We’ve already started to talk about how to handle that challenge. The girls (and the teachers!) were all exhausted after the three hour class. It went amazingly well, but it is still really tiring to teach. Plus, every question is slightly different because the projects are all so varied, so you have to listen to the question, think about it, come up with a solution on the spot, and then find a way to communicate it to the student. It is a lot to handle, but as I’ve said already, these girls are doing amazing work! After school we grabbed lunch at a very sloooooow café, and then headed to a place called Harrison’s Cave, which is a beautiful cave network with all kinds of formations like stalactites and stalagmites. Some of us needed a day out of the sun to let our skin recuperate. Check out our photos of the really beautiful rock formations. Another delicious meal from Selena, another really productive meeting, and I think all are going to sleep early tonight for another intense day tomorrow. Hard to express how proud I am of these girls. Wish you could see them in action! Today was only our second day of teaching and I have never been so tired. In class we first reviewed the computer basics, and certain keys on the keyboard like the neighborhood, personal, and frame, they surprisingly remembered a lot from the last time we met with them on Friday. Before letting them open their computers we asked them what they remembered about scratch and the maze we made on Friday; they brought up the background we had to make to start the maze and we helped lead them to get to the idea of programming the keys which they quickly remembered with a few hints. We had a few new kids because they were playing soccer on Friday on our first day. They watched and followed along as we as a class re-created a maze. After reviewing we did a few “debugging” activities, where there is a problem in the script and they had to fix it, they were very good at talking through the problems to get the solution. We gave them 20 minutes to finish their mazes they had started or to try and start a maze if they had missed classed. After our break at 10:30 we did three more de-bugging exercises that introduced new concepts like the “wait 1 second” control, and the “repeat” control; they all followed along, some participating more than others but once I saw everyone’s work it was clear to me that they understood scratch more than I thought they had. After finishing up the de-bugging exercises we introduced the project they are going to be working on the next two days which is anything doing with Barbados pride, to celebrate their 50 years of independence. We showed them a few examples that we worked on last night that they could do as their project; we showed them a quiz, a story, an information one and a game that they all seemed to enjoy. We let them work on their own for the rest of the class and they had very good ideas. Most of the student’s I was helping chose to do the quiz or game idea. One girl I was helping had a very good idea to make their flag the background and put multiple bananas around the flag’s and is planning to work tomorrow to script the monkey to walk around to each banana and have to answer a question when it touches the bananas which I thought was a very good idea.
Because we didn’t have much eating time on Friday we decided to leave after school and find lunch ourselves. We went down the street from the school and stopped at a café that took longer than expected for a quick lunch. After waiting an hour for our food we went to the Harrison Cave. Here we got to go on a tram to see caves that were naturally formed. We stopped at two points on the tour; once to view the stalactites and stalagmites closer up, and the second time to view a part of the cave where we were 160 feet deep and 700 feet above sea level. The tour was surprisingly interesting to see. After coming home from the tour and a long day of teaching Colleen of course wanted to go to the beach, so I went with her for a few hours and read my book! Even though it is not for a few days, I am still nervous about having to teach a whole class with just me and Colleen and not having the assistance of Mrs. Murakami. I am excited for Wednesday to have a day off and go souvenir shopping and hope to find some things for my family! Sunday May 22, 2016
Today we decided was going to be a beach hopping day. Skylar stayed back for the first part and got more rest. The rest of us headed out to go explore some beaches. We drove about 20 minutes and found a very white sand beach. Today was different than the previous days because it was very windy. Therefore, the waves were huge and the water was rough. The sand also was blowing everywhere and we were constantly all covered in sand. We walked on a boardwalk and took a nice walk on the beach. After, we got back in the car and drove to the Hilton Hotel. My aunt and cousin just so happen to be in Barbados at the same time as us, and they were staying at the Hilton. We ate lunch there and I got to see them! I was very happy. We then went back and got Skylar at the house. We drove to another beach that was close to the house and just enjoyed the sunshine! The waves weren't as bad there and the sand didn't blow as much. There was a ton of rocks though so it was difficult to get in the water. Our beach hopping day was a success and now the sun has drained us all-we are exhausted! Tomorrow we will begin a week of teaching. I am very excited to get back and teach. Cant wait to see what this week holds! Sunday, May 22
After a day of exploring beaches and caves, we slept in a little later this morning and then drove through Bridgetown to see the southern part of the island. The difference in traffic in the capital city between Thursday afternoon and Sunday morning was remarkable. Instead of sitting in traffic, we were at times the only car on the road. We spent a few hours at Accra Beach, walking on the boardwalk, lounging in the sun, and enjoying the clear, blue waters. With the sun shining, the ocean was an astonishing number of different blues. We grabbed lunch at the Hilton so that Colleen could meet up with her aunt and cousin, who happened to be in Barbados at the same time we were. Afterwards, we drove a little closer to home to Batts Rock Beach, where the waves and wind were both much gentler. Though they were exhausted from a day in the sun, I was impressed by the girls’ focus and ideas during our planning session for tomorrow’s lesson. They quickly agreed on the ideas and skills they needed to recap and figured out how to ensure that these lessons were engaging and interactive. A three-hour class can be an intimidating block of time, but they are going into tomorrow armed with quick programming explorations, debugging puzzles, and project examples. Soaking up the sun is fun, but I’m looking forward to heading back to St. Alban’s tomorrow and seeing the amazing things these girls can do. Saturday, May 21
Today I think we’re going to get some repetitive posts, so I’ll try to consider things the girls won’t write. I’m sure they’ll tell you about the boat, the turtles, the beach, the cave, maybe even the baby goat that can’t have been more than 30 minutes old. What they might not mention – though I’m sure they notice – is how cohesive they are as a group. If you’ve been following the blog, you’ll have already read how successful their teaching was yesterday, but in conversations with them today, they truly appreciated that they could think on the fly, quickly agree on a course of action, and seamlessly implement their plan without delay. All three of these girls are “make it happen” kinds of girls. They don’t wait for instruction, they see a need and jump right in and do something to help. Just my kind of person! That cohesiveness and “make it happen” attitude exists in other areas beyond the classroom. While deciding what to do today, they were easily able to determine that they wanted to go see the “Animal Flower Cave” at the very northern tip of the island. On the way there, we saw a beautiful beach, and it happened to be sunny at that moment (the forecast was for clouds and rain all day) so we parked and spent some time at the beach. Not 15 minutes later, Emma had negotiated a boat ride to go see turtles, including prices for the three of them OR all five of us. Within minutes, we were packing up our towels and getting on a boat to zoom to a spot where the captain fed the turtles so we could observe, and even touch them. (I’ve never been close enough to touch turtles, by the way. This was a really cool experience.) Their “teamwork” if you want to call it that, translated even to their deciding to cook tonight, and shop for groceries, and come up with a nice menu. Tonight is the only night we don’t have a catered meal. Selena is cooking for a wedding, so I asked the girls what they wanted to do. They immediately said they wanted to cook, so one of today’s activities was a grocery stop, not for breakfast foods or snacks, but to plan a dinner. It was fun to watch them in action, discussing, negotiating, and ultimately agreeing (or, possibly compromising) on what they should prepare. The initiative they show is wonderful. The adaptability they demonstrate is a delight. On an entirely different note, there is a huge mango tree in the yard of this guesthouse. We’ve already seen monkeys come and pilfer the fruit (which is abundant on the ground), but today we also saw a trio of goats eating the mangoes. This morning, it was me, collecting a few mangos to snack on before our late breakfast. Such a treat! Oh, and one point about the teaching day. The bloggers mentioned prayers. I learned that there is no separation of church and state here, so even though the schools are public, they are named after saints and they include prayers. It’s so much fun to learn new things about someone else’s culture. Today was our first full free day! We got to sleep in and Emma made pancakes for us for breakfast. After breakfast we headed out and were planning to go to the Animal Flower Cave but took a detour to a beach we saw on the way. After settling down and four different men asking us if we wanted to do any sport activities. We eventually decided to go on a speed boat to take us to snorkel and swim with turtles. That was my first time snorkeling so I was very nervous and was having a panic attack the first couple seconds after jumping in, but once I realized the turtles were harmless I was okay. We swam with the turtles for around 45 minutes and the boat took us back to where we first were. It was very hot so we decided to head to our original destination of the cave. We ate at the restaurant there and then after went on the cave tour. It was very cool and was not what I was expecting the tour guide said that the water was 40 feet deep right out of the cave. He then took us to a swimming part of the tour were we could swim toward the edge of the cave and look out to see the ocean, we stayed there for a while and got lots of pictures of course. We finished up the cave tour and walked back up to see a goat and a baby goat who it had just given birth to! The owner of the animals took the baby to where it belonged and we followed it to then see a pig try and attack the mother goat. We left once we told the man what was happening, because we didn’t want to see animal’s getting hurt. After our long day we had to stop at the grocery store to get what we wanted for dinner, and that ended up being pasta. Emma made the pasta and now we are wrapping up the day. We had such a long day that I am just looking forward to going upstairs and falling asleep and very excited to be able to sleep in again tomorrow for our other free day which we planned at dinner to go see the southern part of the island.
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Trip BlogEvery day we will have two students and one teacher blog. Emma, the senior, will blog daily, the two juniors and the two teachers will alternate. Please check back often! |