Thursday
These past five days in the classrooms of St. James Primary have made me 100% supportive of the OLPC program. Theoretically, I knew it was a good thing to teach children computer science because we are, after all, living in a digitally connected world. Our major infrastructure systems--transportation, media and communications, government, energy, education, etc.--all rely heavily on computers. After this past week, I can now say that, experientially, the OLPC program is a win-win situation, not only because it builds crucial technological skills, but also because it keeps the focus on people. In other words, people seeking to understand and interact with and learn from others. Both the St. James students and the CSG teachers "win" because they're communicating across age, culture, dialect, and attitude differences. The St. James students are stretching beyond rote memorization. They're being asked to connect what they are learning (coding) and what they are personally interested in (gaming, singing, sports, etc.). I'm not sure the students have ever been asked what they like, much less what they are passionate about. When you ask them what they'd like to do next or what they wish they could make their sprite do, they are often at a loss to answer. Our girls are asking them to be curious, adventurous, creative, logical, patient, persevering, and independent--all at the same time. What are our girls learning? Many things about effective teaching, which is really all about effective communication. They're learning they need to have a game plan for the eighty-minute period, and while they're at it, best to have a back-up plan as well. They're learning to meet individual students where they are--not where they want them to be. They're learning when to be firm, perhaps even stern, and when to be warm and encouraging. They're learning that these kids have the same worries (about bullying, about fairness, about "not getting it") that kids back home do. Most importantly, they're learning to be flexible and to step into the roles in which they can have the most impact. I've observed one girl be the primary "explainer" for the whole class, and another spontaneously take a smaller group of boys who were behind on the lesson out onto the verandah for more intense instruction, and still others be extremely effective in one-on-one interactions. It's been an inspiring week.
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Wednesday
Hi everyone, it’s Katie! Yesterday was half way through our trip. I can’t believe how fast it has gone by! The kids yesterday were great, and we started our new maze projects. They listen very well, but my goal for the rest of this trip is to teach them to think creatively. It seems that they have some trouble with making their own ideas, and I think creative thinking is essential to any student, and person in general. After class yesterday we went on a turtle watching boat and got to snorkel and we saw turtles! We also got to snorkel over a shipwreck and jump off the top of the boat. I am extremely interested in marine life and thought that the turtle and the fish were beautiful! I am so sad that we have to leave soon, but at the same time I am so happy that I have had this incredible experience. Wednesday
Today we started new projects with the kids that involved them creating their own maze games. Yesterday we had a hard time getting them to focus so we wanted to find a better way to make it more fun and to help get them more interested. My first class had a rough time understand all the Scratch coding they needed in order for the sprite to actually move. They eventually caught on but weren't 100% understanding everything. However they were very willing to listen and learn in order to try to understand and make the game on their own. The second class was the opposite of the first. They caught on right away but they had no interest in moving further after they had finished what we had given them to do. They kept wanting to do other games and it was a bit frustrating and hard to keep them on task. While it was stressful it was still a successful day and we made great progress on their maze projects! After teaching we first got a lunch at a great restaurant located right on the beach! Then we had an amazing day snorkeling! We went on a boat with a great captain and our first stop was to see the turtles! It was so cool because the turtles were literally in our reach and we even saw sting rays! After the turtles we got to see a ship wreck and some coral which was also very beautiful! At the end of the boat ride we all got to jump off the roof, including Ms.Miranda and it was overall an awesome day! Wednesday
Today was our midpoint in teaching the students here. We started our morning with three lessons done and three to go. Also, Charles Cyrus visited our classrooms, which was very generous of him. Charles is my contact here on the island who works for the Ministry of Science Technology and Innovation, and is the one who finds schools willing to host us for the week. He also lends out the laptops throughout the year when we are not here. We had an interesting conversation about what it would take to bring this program to the next level. He is sending me back home with some great ideas about how to expand what we do to reach more students. I’m excited about the possibilities. After observing our students in the days prior, we’d determined that our final project would be a maze with words in it. The sprite would navigate around the maze using the arrow keys in order to collect the words, which would disappear on contact. The “game” ends when the sprite navigates to a target on the opposite end of the screen. We planned to take three days to do this with them, and so far so good. After today’s lesson, they all have a sprite that you can navigate using the arrow keys, and many of them have three words on the screen that will be the targets for the sprite. They made good progress, but it’s unclear how much they will take away from this experience. Will they remember computing concepts, or just that they made a little character move around the screen. Or even less? Perhaps all they'll remember is that they had fun with some girls from the US for a week. This is what I struggle with. I guess it's all good. At the very least this is a great cultural exchange. In the two classrooms where Eleanor, Merrill and I teach, the first period is our older class. You’d think they would be better at the concepts than the younger students. But in reality, they struggle with the concepts more than the younger class. However, they are exceptionally well behaved, they seem to want to do everything that we ask them to do, and the class is really calm and peaceful. The other class, the younger ones, grasp the concepts much quicker, but then they don’t know how to keep themselves going. Once they do what we ask, they can’t seem to keep exploring on their own. So they get bored waiting for their slower classmates to finish and chaos ensues. It’s really unexpected. But Merrill and Eleanor are working on strategies to keep them motivated – particularly during that last half hour before their lunch break. That last half hour is a struggle. After school we went back to the beach in Holetown where the girls had arranged for a snorkel boat to tour us around. This was one of the more fun experiences snorkeling that I’ve ever had. First they brought us to a place where they knew we’d see turtles. In addition to a couple of turtles, there was a flounder, stingray, jelly, and myriad other fish to see. The next stop was really fun. It was sort of high-speed snorkeling. They had us jump in and hold on to a rope while they slowly dragged us around over a reef. It was filled with interesting fish and corals, but because we were moving, it was a little like people watching on North High Street during Gallery Hop… you sit and watch as a huge variety of people walk by. I’d never “snorkeled” quite like that but it was a blast! We ended up over a sunken barge which was teeming with fishes. It was simply gorgeous. We ended our tour by jumping off of the top deck of the boat. (See the gallery photos for what this actually looks like.) It was really fun! Another delicious dinner – tonight was curry night – a meeting to plan our last two days, and some more hang-out time rounded out the day. Tuesday
Today at the school we taught the basics of Scratch and continued working on our 1st project. We learned how to use controls, and how to have sprites talk when they are clicked. The kids were eager to learn and were a blast to work with. When I arrived at the school some of the kids had made me cards and sung to me for my birthday. I am grateful to have spent my birthday working with these kids in Barbados. Later we went to the beach, and there we rented jetskis which was really fun. Later we took a walk on the beautiful Barbadian beach and took lots of pictures. Tuesday
As we arrived at St. James Primary School this morning, we were greeted by a crowd of children. After passing out the XO computers, the kids began working on their Scratch projects. Many kids quickly jumped into building and creating a small game describing three sprites of their choosing. One thing that I noticed while working with the kids was that many kids could not think of sentences or motions for the sprites to follow by themselves and often required our guidance. This is a different mentally than many American schools where kids are eager to continue, and have plenty of ideas to develop projects. Following the first class, we decided we could teach the kids more about scratch by simply requiring one sentence of text, giving the kids more time to develop the motions and sounds the sprites make. In my second class, this led to many kids finishing before the class was over and losing interest in scratch. I think that by still requiring text in addition to other activities could interest the kids and keep their focus. My favorite teaching moment is hard to pick out, but one of my most memorable moments was today in our second class. I was showing a group of boys how to code a sprite to follow your mouse, with my help they were able to code multiple sprites to follow their mouse. After completing this simple task, one boy looked up at me and beaming from ear to ear. He was so happy that he was able to achieve the task, and soon began laughing as the sprite moved across the screen. This boy’s laugh was so cute and made it feel like I was making a difference. Whether that difference is that this boy grows up to become a coder, or simply smiles in that moment, I helped he achieve that. After teaching today, we went to a beach near our villa and enjoyed the beautiful water and white sand. All of the girls rented jet skis and had lots of fun driving them across the waves. We had pizza night for dinner, and then we went to see the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie. Following the movie, we celebrated Emma’s 16th birthday with cake as we planned the lesson for teaching tomorrow. Tuesday
No matter the specific teaching circumstances--whether the subject is computer coding or grammar, the students are in primary school or high school, or the country is Barbados or the U.S.--the rewards of teaching are universal. Today, I worked a little with individual students to polish their sentences: capitalize the first word of every sentence, capitalize proper nouns, put a period (here, they use the term "full stop," as they do in Britain) at the end of your sentences, etc. I get so happy when students feel they have the tools to progress in their writing (or whatever happens to be the work at hand). One girl, whom I'll refer to as J., hadn't yet begun writing her three sentences. I helped her get started, and when I came back to check on her, she'd finished one. But she looked delighted with herself, and I felt exactly the same way. Another student, a boy I'll call S., had not only written three sentences, but had also set up a three-character dialogue. Though there were a few spelling errors, he'd approached the assignment in a more sophisticated way. We high-fived with glee. Both instances are triumphs because both students took a step forward. A few years ago, I stopped telling my students the class average on essays and quizzes. I wanted to take the focus away from measuring themselves against others to measuring how far they've come. How wonderful for our girls to see their students progress. From their conversations after the day's teaching, I know they are proud of each individual's successes, no matter how small or large. When they return to the States and begin a new year, my hope is that they will see their own steps forward as the true measure of learning. Monday
Today started when we arrived at the school and were greeted with cheers of our names. The kids were so excited to see us, and it made us feel like celebrities. One of the things that we had trouble with was trying to organize the computers by class, so we arrived a bit early today to sort those out. I stayed back in the closet with the laptops to hand out laptops. It made me so happy to see how excited they were to get out the laptops and work, which gave me a lot of hope for a productive and fun week. Perhaps the moment that reignited with me the most today was a conversation that Eleanor and I had with a little boy who had gotten in trouble. He told us that he got in trouble for play – fighting with his friend. He also told us that the teacher who yelled at him “barked at them like they were dogs”. This boy was so sweet, and it was hard to believe that he was considered a trouble maker. It was strange to see a child so fearful at school, which is supposed to be a safe place. It is moments like this in which we have to take a step back and think about the difference in culture here. While Barbados is much more “modern” than other smaller countries, it is still acceptable for children to sit in a corner during a lesson when they get in trouble, and for teachers to hit children that misbehave. This was a shock to me because these are things that would be punishable by society, and maybe even the law in the US. After this, we went to our first class. We worked on some challenges and made them think creatively about how to make things happen with their laptops. They were very diligent and willing to work hard on their projects, and incredibly proud of themselves when they figured something out. In our second class, we did the same thing as in the first class. I thought that because these children were younger it would be much harder to teach them, but in reality, they are very willing to learn and are receptive to ideas. Their enthusiasm overshadows their lack of knowledge, and in my opinion is much more important. Monday
Today was our second day of teaching! We began our lessons with refreshing the student’s memories on the basics of Scratch and trying to get them to re familiarize themselves with the program. Our main goal of today was to either start or introduce one of the main projects we are going to be doing which is having the children write their own "about me" stories. Due to our having already introduced some of the functions of Scratch they were already able to figure out how do to parts of it on their own. Today it was a bit easier to teach because we already had a better idea of how to teach because we did it before on Friday. It was also helpful that the children remembered much of what we taught them on Friday so that way we could move quicker and start new challenges. Having been our second day there the children were more familiarized with us too. When we first drove up to the school, right as we got out of the car, they all were yelling our names and saying hi and giving us hugs. It was really awesome to see how excited they were to learn and to see us. We have also become more connected with a few students in our class, for example a little girl named Faith was one whom I helped a lot and got know better. I think that because they are more comfortable with us it makes them more open to learn. One of my favorite parts of the day was when I had a little girl come up and show the class how to do a specific thing in Scratch and she was so confident and willing to show everyone it was amazing to see that we actually are teaching these children something they can use. When we left the school a lot of the students were also giving us hugs and telling us how they didn’t want us to go which was an awesome feeling because it justifies that we are helping them learn and that they are enjoying the process. After we taught we made our way to Crane beach but had a minor detour to Bathsheba beach. At Bathsheba we saw amazing rock forms in the ocean and it was an awesome extra to the day although it did require quite the car ride. We then made our way to Crane beach, which is a pink sand beach. There we sort of snuck into a resort and got lunch then sat out in the sun. We also went into the ocean which was really rough today and had massive waves. When we left there was a man who sold us yummy fruit drinks in fresh coconuts which ended the day on a great note! Monday
Today was a great day! I have to admit that after Friday, I was a little concerned. The Bajan (aka Barbadian) students didn’t seem to have the abilities that we’d anticipated, and I was concerned that they wouldn’t get as much out of our teaching as we’d hoped. But today, they proved me wrong. Not only did they remember so much of what we covered on Friday, but they jumped right in and learned new things with ease. They taught those who were absent on Friday, they readily engaged with us and answered our questions, and visibly lit up when they got something right. It was wonderful. We asked them to start working on a project that involved some writing. You click on a sprite and it says a few sentences and then does something, say, dance in a circle. They were to get three sprites doing different things. Most of them got at least half of it done, so tomorrow, we will finish up and start on a new concept – conditionals – which will then see us through to the end of the week. A great, great day! We left school to go directly to Crane Beach, but had a little GPS misadventure. The GPS brought us to Bathsheba, which is totally out of the way of our intended target. However, Bathsheba is GORGEOUS. It’s the kind of place where you walk around a bit and look at the amazing “mushroom boulders” (see photo below) but don’t go in the water. There’s a lot of seaweed and rip currents, so there’s not much to “do” there, and not even great tanning or beach relaxing. The drive would have been too long to go there if we’d planned it as a stand alone activity, but accidentally ending up there was a wonderful treat! No one seemed to mind the long drive. In fact, this appreciative, adventurous group (see my earlier blog post!) was quite happy about the long detour. It made for quite an adventurous afternoon. We finally did get to the pink sand beach (yes, really!) and had a great time in the jumbly waves of that wilder side of the island. It was one of those moments where you just seize the opportunity and make the most of what otherwise could have been a long slog to nowhere. These girls are wonderful! One of the things I am really enjoying about this group of CSG students is their camaraderie, particularly at the dinner table. We eat buffet style, and sit down to the same large dining room table to eat and talk. Every night we end up hanging out at the table for at least another half hour or more just talking and laughing and telling stories. It warms my heart that there is so much genuine happiness and openness with this group. Most nights they then end up continuing on their laughter in one or the other apartment, playing cards and drinking “kid wine” (better known as sparkling grape juice – which they found in both the red and white varieties!) We capped our night off with a really productive meeting, working through some of the snag points and thinking both ahead and behind to design the best learning experience for the Bajans. This group of girls is wonderfully cooperative, open, thoughtful, creative, and hard working. I am really energized by today and can’t wait for the rest of the week. |
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