A Very Simple Paradox

Hello, hello, hello!

I'm sitting on some steps watching an epic lightening storm accompanied by some lite (which will soon be epic) rain and I thought I would give everyone a more comprehensive blog update. I'm still learning to blog so.. stick with me.

Since my last update, we have had a lot more sessions but some more interesting days mixed in.  On Sunday, we all woke up early to board some buses and go to Manila Bay for some water safety training.  We all have our standard issue bright yellow life vests that we had to test out. At the bay, which was far from the cleanest water in the world, we got into a bangka, or pump boat, with about six of us and motored out from the shore.  Once out a bit, we just had to jump out of the boat and successfully float while being throttled by a giant yellow inflatable. After that, the boat pulled back around and we had to climb back in.  Bangkas are the most common way to get from island to island in the Philippines and I guess it can get dangerous when the boats are overloaded. And, interesting fact, most Filipinos don't know how to swim. Remind me to remind them that they live on an archipelago. Am I right?

So we were at this beach around 8 AM and were told that it wasn’t a very crowded beach, so it would most likely just be us there. However, I learned an important cultural lesson: never underestimate the Filipinos drive to Videoke. There were people already there singing away. So after we all passed our floating tests, a few of us joined them for a rousing version of Hey Jude, followed by the Filipino and American birthday song for a woman there.  Other than mall trips, it was our first time kind of hanging out with Filipinos and the people here are just so warm and welcoming – I couldn’t have asked for a better country to work in.  Afterwards, we all piled on the bus – tired and smelly – to just hang out for the rest of the day.

Also, on our way there we passed by an awesome game of another great Filipino pastime – flip flop basketball.  Can’t wait to hang out with the neighbourhood kids and take some free throws in my rainbows.

The next exciting day was on Tuesday when we went on a field trip! Again, the buses were piled and we set out to visit five different schools (ambitious).  The schedule was to arrive at the school, meet with the principal, then go to a classroom in pairs.  In the classroom we observed for 15 minutes followed by Q&As with the students – us speaking Tagalog and them speaking English. The schedule was usually far more rushed because the welcomes always took longer than expected, but it was a really, really informative day. 

I’ll give you some of the highlights:

The first school we went to had about 13 classrooms…. With over 4,000 students. They have a system so that half of the students come to school from 6:00am to noon and the others come from 1:00pm to 7:00pm, but you can still imagine how crowded the rooms were.  Kids are seating at desks, often sharing them with their neighbour, that are crammed in next to each other and it was unbelievably hot, even at 8:00am.  This was by far the most crowded school we visited but it’s definitely not uncommon.

The second school was definitely nicer – huge grounds, larger classrooms, and bigger library.  They had an amazing little welcome ceremony for us with a young girl singing the national anthem followed by a dance from the dance team – check out my Facebook pictures. It was really fun.

We then went to a neighbouring high school that was very similar, but more cramped. It was nearing noon at this point and really hot and humid.  The classrooms have windows with big wooden shutter things and open doorways and when you would walk past the classroom were literally hit by a wall of heat just pouring out of the room. Now imaging sitting in the middle of sixty kids trying to hear one teacher in the front of the room for hours after hours in that heat and trying to actually learn anything.

The second high school was a science high school and was, again, nicer than the first. There were less kids – maybe ooonnnlllyyy 50 – in a bigger building. But, to clarify, when I say nicer I generally think of it as in more space.  The other resources ranged from a computer or two per school to a computer lab with a few computers, some schools had microphones for the teachers or a TV in the front that they could hook their laptops up to – but we’ve been told to expect nothing like that.  A common Peace Corps education project is library building.  The libraries we saw had anywhere from half a wall to maybe three walls of books, all extremely outdated. So, defriend me on Facebook book muy rapido if you don’t want to be pestered by a book drive sometime in the next two years!

Finally, we went to a college to observe.  This was probably my favourite stop – although I literally can’t explain how cute and polite these kids are to us – because I had some really good conversation with the students.  They had a higher level of English, ranging from pretty close to fluent to maybe intermediate, so it was nice to have actual conversations with some locals. I’m really, really excited to get to my site and meet my fellow teachers and neighbours and host family so I can befriend some Filipinos. That’s one thing that really made me want to do the Peace Corps is the fact that you are living and working in the Philippines with Filipino co-workers and friends and family.  You are actually living here.

So, that was the field trip. It was way more exhausting and exciting and interesting and sweaty than I can convey.  Ultimately, it was just nice to get a glimpse at some of the conditions that we might be working with.  It made all of the sessions full of teaching theory and techniques way more concrete.

Our sessions, while often dry, have actually been really interesting for me.  I haven’t had any formal teaching training (unlike other volunteers) so it’s all new to me. And after a week and half of crash course teaching I have to give all da props to all of the good teachers out there – this stuff is easy to read and understand but to actually use it in a classroom is going to be touuugh. So.. Thanks teachers!! Keep it up.

I think the most interesting stuff we have been learning is just the idea that everyone learns in a different way and that’s often a cultural thing.  In the Philippines, learning has a huge emphasis on memorization.  So my English students might have their entire vocab list down but can’t manage to construct a simple sentence – just because they haven’t been taught to learn like that. One of our TCFs (Technical Cultural Facilitator – Filipino working for the Peace Corps during training) was telling a story of when he used to teach English to Vietnamese refugees.  He was telling this story in an unrelated context, but it really made me think about different learning styles. He did an activity where he had the alphabet on the board with symbols next to it. Then below that he had the symbols all mixed up and together on a line. He said it took his students close to 10 minutes of looking at it before they figured out that the line of symbols were a sentence that they to decode.  And I was thinking how we’ve been doing activities like that in class, workbooks, or on the back of a Fruit Loops box since we were young and would have figure it out much quicker.  So it’s not that these Vietnamese students were less intelligent, they just hadn’t been taught to think that way.  Anyway. I’m rambling and I’m sure this is old news to anyone who has studied any sort of education, but its opening my eyes so much.

But I am feeling confident about teaching finally! I’m having some good ideas for activities and classroom things and keeping a little notebook of them.  I really am feeling good – but the challenge is going to be when I’m faced with a class of 60 students who haven’t been faced with reading comprehension questions in English.  The education system here is extremely bureaucratic and learning styles – like rote memorization – are deeply engrained in their education system.  And Peace Corps Volunteers definitely aren’t here to turn that upside, but we’re expected to work within this system to find ways to improve what already exists.  I’m not here to reinvent the wheel but I’m here to make the road a little smoother.  We keep hearing how crucial it is to really integrate into and understand not only the Filipino culture but the culture of your specific schools so you can really make significant and lasting changes.  A principal at one of the schools gave a little powerpoint on how he was improving the school and described the process of creating an effective school for effective students a "very simple paradox", which made me laugh a little. This is definitely not going to be simple work.  Bleh – I’m getting sooOoOooooOOOoo Peace Corpsy on you.

Anyways – everyone here is still as cool as ever.  We’re all still together but on Sunday we split up to go to our different PST sites (reminder: I’ll be in Subic). I’m going with a group of 12 education volunteers then 20something CYF volunteers who will be relatively close to us (maybe 30 minutes jeepney ride).  I don’t know anything specific about my host family yet.  I know that all of the families have at least 3-4 kids in the house.  Only one of the families has a father who is working abroad.  I do know that I am staying with a host mom who is sister to another host mom who is hosting Carl, our 80 year old volunteer! I actually could not be more excited. Carl is the best. He has the craziest experiences and stories – so expect future posts and Facebook posts to consist solely of Carl-isms.

Not sure if I’ll get another blog post out before I head to Subic, so wish me luck! I’ll update as soon as I can with internet availability and such.  Sorry to a few people that I think I’ve dropped calls or chats with (Allison, Jack) – there is internet here but sometimes it gets drowned by the rain or just doesn’t want to work for me. But I miss everyone so much!! I hate that I didn’t get a chance to grab a coney with Barack – he was probably blowing up my American phone, wondering why I wasn’t answering. I’ll email him now and explain.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx kisses and peacecorps

Be an opener of doors for such as come after thee, and do not try to make the universe a blind alley.  Ralph Waldo Emerson