The Prodigal Blogger Returns

Pohnpeian Word of the Day: ansou = “time”

Another few weeks have passed here in the tropics, and I haven’t put anything here at all. Mostly, that’s because there hasn’t been much to tell, but here we go anyway…

The last time I posted was just before September 11th, which is Pohnpei Liberation Day. The night before the holiday, Beth came up from Kitti – her roommate, Nic, was in Kosrae for the long weekend and she was beginning to get pestered by the neighbors without him. We drank some Red Horse and discussed philosophy until she eventually crashed on our couch.

The next morning, we got up and went to Namiki for breakfast, where I discovered I could eat relatively cheaply by ordering everything individually. I’ve really been pinching pennies lately, so even the $5 tab for some bacon and an egg hit pretty hard, but it was nice to eat a real breakfast with company. While we ate, we worked on Meghan’s birthday cards – she turned 22 the day before. Mine was one of those tacky cards where you make a word starting with each letter of the person’s name:

Mini soooda (she’s from Minnesota)
Eco-friendly
Goofy grin
Hippy
Athlete
Natural diplomat

When we finished eating, we walked to PICS to see the Liberation Day track meet. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many Pohnpeians in one place – half of Kolonia must have been there, and I’ll bet Madolenihmw was completely abandoned (I hope somebody remembered to turn off the lights). All the high schools on the island fielded teams, and Kitti apparently won most of the events.

Meghan and Michaela were officiating at the long jump, and when everyone took a break for lunch, I had a chance to give Meghan our cards. After that, I left… I’m not much for watching sporting events, and did I mention how hot it is here? Like, really hot. I don’t think it would have been soooo hard for PICS to put a fan or a couple of misters by the stands – or maybe hold the whole thing at night.

That was the last major event to report, judging by the tape in my camcorder. The only other thing worth noting was the time they cut the power on the whole island for a Saturday. They were having all sorts of problems with the generator – the power kept going off several times a day, for up to an hour at a time. For some reason, they managed to time it so that this was always right in the middle of one of my lectures – if Pohnpeian students weren’t already restless enough, having all the lights and fans off will definitely do the trick.

The worst part about a power outage is that all the computers in our office are hooked up to Uninterruptible Power Supplies (or UPS’s for short). Don’t ask me why, but even though we all have five-year-old computers and no one can ever get toner for the copiers or markers for the transparencies, every single computer at COM is hooked into a UPS. When the power goes off, these little buggers all start wailing simultaneously, as if to say “I’m here, it’s dark, and I can only keep this thing running for a minute or two!” It makes quite a little racket.

Last weekend they announced that they were going to shut down the whole grid at nine in the morning on Saturday, to do some diagnostic stuff I guess. Of course, in true Pohnpeian style, it didn’t actually shut off until ten, but it was thankfully back up at three. Then off again at five, and back at six. Since then, the lights have flickered now and then but they stay on. Here’s hoping it stays that way – or I’ll have to chuck my UPS out the window.

As for my classes… my morning class, Prealgebra, is going pretty well. More than a third of my students have legitimate A’s (that is, going my the grade scale in the syllabus, without any curving). This is despite the incredibly odd order that the book goes in – after we finished our discussion of negative numbers, we launched right in to polynomials! For those of you that don’t know much math, that’s a pretty big leap. Usually, you talk about solving linear equations and such before you get into that kind of thing, but they seem to be taking it in stride.

I don’t know if I just have more energy in the morning or something, but this class always seems the friendliest, which is odd considering how simple the material is and how slowly I teach it. I haven’t had too many discipline problems – which is nice, since I’ve never really had many discipline solutions – but maybe the real troublemakers haven’t really woken up yet at 8:30. There are even a couple of high-performing students in this class that come to my office hours, and I have started to become friendly with them.

My later classes, two sections of Elementary Algebra, are another story. Both of these classes have more B’s than any other letter grade, with only 15% of the students having A’s. I have a lot of discipline problems in these classes, ranging from students talking and giggling loudly, to yelling out answers before I ask for or want them (in hopes that this will somehow make class end sooner), to one student who always announces loudly that time is up (usually five minutes before it really is).

My biggest pet peeve is the chairs. Half of them show up late to class – I’ve tried my best to curb this by giving the daily problem the very minute class begins, and collecting it no more than five minutes after – but the fact that I have clearly begun my lecture doesn’t stop them from noisily picking up chairs and moving them all the way to the other side of the room to sit by their friends. The problem is that both of the rooms I teach in are significantly larger than the space required for an orderly grid of chairs, so we end up with them backed up all the way against the back wall, and then grouped in little clusters all around the rest of the room, with a huge empty space in the middle.

A lot of the time, when I’m teaching these Algebra classes, the brighter students try to give me the impression that this is all really boring and trivial, which makes me feel like I should move faster – but then they do miserably on the daily problems and exams, so they don’t understand as well as they pretend. Of course, I’ve experienced this before as a teacher, but usually I can tell from the facial expressions of the other students whether or not the majority really does “get it”. The problem for me is that these kids are impossible to read – I’ve never seen anything I would call “confusion” on their faces, just a totally blank stoic stare that could mean anything. Of course, that’s the ones that are awake.

The biggest problem with the MS 96 Algebra course, for me, is that my stopping point is set in stone because the class is the first part of a two-semester series. If my students are going to have a chance of succeeding in MS 99, I absolutely have to finish all of Chapter 6 before the semester ends. That will be hard, considering I just started Chapter 3 last week (and I spent a whole week on one section, 3.1) and the semester is nearly halfway over, but I can do it as long as I keep up the pace.

I’m starting to regret having given them so many graded assignments in the original syllabus. Every week, I give each class a test and three daily problems, as well as collecting a homework – and I have 94 total students. My stack of grading to be done never goes away… as soon as I finish one major assignment, another one rolls in. At least I do stay ahead of it now – I usually get the homework assignments and tests back within a day or two.

I finally set up my grade book in Excel to automatically calculate all the pertinent totals and percentages, and with a little tinkering I figured out how to export these to Word. Now, every time I grade a major assignment and put the grades in the computer, I can easily print out a series of slips, one for each student, already filled out with all the data straight from my grade book. I cut these apart and staple them to the assignment, so that each student knows exactly what grade they have at that moment.

All of this is basically just for good old-fashioned CYA. None of my students will be able to come to me, as they usually do, at the end of the semester to complain about their low grades – they will have seen them coming from a long way off. CYA is also the main reason I have so much grading in the first place – I like the idea that each student’s final letter grade is based on so many individual assignments that it is impossible for a bad score on just a couple to severely impact it. When I finally turn in my grade book to my superiors at COM, I will have a lot of data to point to in case any disputes arise, especially if I end up failing half of my class – which I, of course, hope not to do.

I spoke with my immediate boss, George Mangonon, about the possibility of teaching all Prealgebra sections next semester. I like the lower-level course better, mostly because there is no pre-set ending point… everyone I have spoken with says you have to put all nine chapters in your official syllabus, but that you can really teach it at whatever pace is appropriate to the students, and how much you actually cover depends on them.

If I had the opportunity to focus on a single course like that one, I would rearrange the topics (polynomials before fractions?) and add more fun activities. The Tuesday and Thursday extended periods are supposed to be for “lab”, but most teachers use them to have the students do seat work – I use mine for lecture and exams. I can think of tons of fun things I would do to reinforce various concepts … but I need the time to prepare for them, and I need to be free of this crazy grading cycle, so they will have to wait for next semester.

Aside from COM… well, I have stalled on War and Peace. I rarely have time to type out a blog, let alone pick up a book, but if I do find time it’s hard to get back into the dry Napoleonic Wars. I keep staring at Philip K. Dick’s A Scanner Darkly, which I got in a trade with Jim for The Road (take that, Cormac McCarthy), but I feel like I should finish what I start. Then again, I have managed to listen to every last one of the couple dozen audiobooks I ripped to my computer before leaving (they are great when you’re grading), and I’ve got to have something new to think about.

I’ve been trying to visit Floid more regularly, with little success. Usually, I’m so wiped out by the end of the day that I can’t even think of walking down to Ohmine (20 minutes away), where I will invariably stay at least a few hours in the un-air-conditioned house. I don’t feel terribly selfish in opting not to go, but I still regret it a bit.

However, when I do make it down there, I always find him to be an inspiration. The kid somehow manages to put a good amount of honest effort into his schoolwork, despite the half-dozen toddlers screaming and running around him at all times, and the adults who occasionally interject with answers he can get himself or snap at him for making a mistake. Spending time with him feels like the sort of thing I came here to do, a feeling I don’t frankly get as much at the college.

I’ve been trying to motivate him to work hard in between the times I can make it there. Two weeks ago, I told him I would bring him a surprise present – a bootleg copy of The Dark Knight, which I must have watched two dozen times by now – if he went to school for a whole week, Monday through Friday (he skips a lot). He didn’t make it, but I made him the same offer for this last week. I’m going over to the house today to follow up, and hopefully he’ll get the DVD and we can do some math together.

Floid’s biggest interest is in mythology – he is always asking me questions I can’t answer about Zeus, Pan, the Minotaur, etc. – and my next plan is to try and use this to improve his English. I’m going to make up “Myth Investigation” sheets, and part of his “assignment” for next week, in addition to going to school every day, will be to fill one out. The idea is for him to pick a local Pohnpeian myth, and find out everything he can about it (who? where? why? etc.) by talking to people.

After he fills out the sheet, I’m going to have him write the story down (in English) using all the details he collected. Then we do a second draft, and finally he can type it on my computer. It’s an elaborate plan, but I’m hoping it will be something that interests him – he says he wants to be a mythologist, after all, but he thinks he can do it without going to high school. I hope to give him some practice with writing this way.

I feel like I need to get more involved with this individual tutoring – it breaks down many of the walls that go up around Pohnpeians when they are in large groups. Fortunately, I got the TSP tutoring job (as if there was any doubt ☺) so that should help. It will also help to get paid $10 an hour – all that cheap Chinese merchandise in Manila isn’t going to buy itself.

To get the TSP job, I had to get an FSM social security number – all I had to do was bring my passport and $3 to the social security branch office. When I was there, a man on his way out greeted me and asked who I was with. After I explained that I was with WorldTeach, he said I was here to help his country. I said I hoped so, and he assured me that I will and shook my hand. I have one of these brief perfunctory interactions every once and a while, and they can be amazingly uplifting given the sort of reaction I get from my students.

As for Japanese, class is going well… the other day, we had finally learned enough phrases to have a somewhat unscripted conversation – unfortunately, it was as usual a conversation between a diner and a waiter:

W: O’kimari desu ka? 

       (Are you ready to order?)
D: Hai. Suteeki ni shimasu. 

       (Yes. I’ll have the steak.)
W: Suteeki wa ikaga nasai masu ka? 

       (How would you like your steak cooked?)
D: Midiamu de. 

       (Medium.)
W: O’nomimono wa ikaga nasai masu ka? 

       (What would you like to drink?)
D: Juusu wa nani ga arimasu ka? 

       (What kinds of juice do you have?)
W: Painappuru, orenji, sutoroberii ga arimasu ga… 

       (We have pineapple, orange and strawberry…)
D: Orenji juusu o kudasai. 

       (Bring me an orange juice.)
W: Kashiko marimashita. Shooshoo o’machi kudasai. 

       (Certainly, sir. Just a moment, please)

I took great pleasure in transcribing these conversations into hiragana, in which I am now pretty fluent, and katakana, which I am starting to learn – my teacher even complimented my handwriting at one point. The katakana characters are used for words of foreign origin, such as suteeki (ステ—キ) and midiamu (ミディアム). Frankly, I think katakana is a bit ugly compared to its sister, which is more cursive and intricate, but you need both. Just for fun, here’s how I would write the above conversation (the katakana is underlined):

W: おきまりですか｡
D: はい｡ ステ—キにします｡
W: ステ—キはいかがなさいますか｡
D: ミディアムで｡
W: おにものはいかがなさいますか｡
D: ジュ—スはなにがありますか｡
W: パイナップル､オレンジ､ストロベリ—がありますが｡
D: オレンジジュ—スをください｡
W: かしこまりました｡ しょうしょうおまちください｡

Note that there are no spaces between words – once you put in kanji and use the kanas less, it becomes clearer where one word stops and the next begins. Also, there is no equivalent to the English question mark “?” because the particle ka (か) always indicates a question at the end of a sentence. Oh, and the commas are backwards – what’s up with that?

So my birthday is November 5th, and I will soon be putting up another “wish list” on the blog in case anyone wants to send me something – Ms. Lyons’ 4th grade class, I’m looking in your direction ;). Mostly, it’ll be books – I want some Japanese children’s books (anything for the first grade won’t have any complicated kanji in it), some dictionaries and maybe a couple of English novels and such. Anyway, stay tuned … I’ll put up a full list probably in my next post.

Signs have been posted all over COM reminding everyone to “Speak English”. On these signs two people, who are either albino Pohnpeians or just not Pohnpeian at all, communicate in speech bubbles – one says “What’s the skinny?” and the other replies “I’m cool.” I have never heard anyone younger than my mom’s generation use the word “skinny” as a noun, but I guess it’s coming back in the third world – so consider this post to be the skinny on me lately, and accept my apologies that it took so long to write it.