Teaching with limited resource

Ok wow – the name of this game definitely isn’t ‘teaching with limited resources’…it is ‘teaching with hundreds of completely and disastrously unorganized resources – that may not be top of the line.”

So I found the library today – about a zillion school supplies – oh, and my principle! Oh, and school starts tomorrow. I got back from Majuro this afternoon at about 12 and found out that school is starting tomorrow. Definitely wasn’t expecting that one. Apparently Movie, our principle, made it back into town somehow over the weekend and wants to start school now; so we are. I tried to get a ton done today – seeing how I really hadn’t been able to do much without any working keys to the school or knowledge or supplies other than the few years supply worth of office paper and staples. I was pondering just wall papering the school with white paper and staples to give it a nice fresh look, but decided against it when I realized the leaks in all the roofs and walls would most likely just mush the paper up in a matter of days.

Anyway, today I sat in the Kindergarden room and went through supplies for a solid 4 hours. I picked out the things I thought might be useful for the first couple days of school – but really I had no idea what I was looking for – seeing how I have no idea what I am doing. I wanted to be able to put some things up on the walls at least, to cover up all the scraps from everything that has been glued to them in the past, but I was relatively unsuccessful. I tried to made calendars for each room – but having three rooms and 8 different grade levels to make things for was challenging. Then I tried to use of some of the mounds of construction paper and staples we had by making the kids journals, but it didn’t even look like I made a dent in the stacks after making 50! Oh well, at least they all have journals for right now since NONE of my school supplies have arrived yet. According to the post office they went to Australia, Hawaii, Thailand and then Maine again. Everywhere but the Marshall Islands! Sweet.

Sitting in my room tonight though, trying to figure out what the heck I am going to do with these kids tomorrow though is extremely intimidating. I understand that I am the one that speaks English, and they don’t, so anything I teach them will be more than they know – but appeasing all the levels in my classes is the part I am struggling with. The classes are divided so that: K-2, 3-4, and 5-7 are all grouped together. How do you make a 7th grader and a 5th grader respond equally well to the same lesson? Breaking them into groups will help, but the 7th graders will be bored and disruptive while we are learning things they have already learned twice, and the 5th graders will be the same way when we are doing things way over their heads. Oh mannn, this is going to be a good one.

Then, to top the night off, after I was almost ready to call it quits on my lesson planning, Movie came over to inform me that the science teacher is pregnant and won’t be teaching this year, so if I could teach science that would be great. Now I really feel bad for these kids. I don’t even know where to begin! AND I don’t really speak Marshallese yet, and they don’t know English – so that makes it even harder. Hahah - that subject could really be interesting! I guess that will teach them more English though, so that’s good.

Well, I am going to attempt to get some sleep before my first day of teaching. I am surprisingly not nervous, I just hope the whole town doesn’t come to watch like has happened in other towns already. I am not so sure I would like that – especially since NOTHING is the way I want it yet!