Han' go, paki come.: Miss Chelsea: Newest teacha inna JA Primary School

This week was relatively low key so I thought I’d take the time to tell you about my school. It is a small primary school very high up in the Blue Mountains. There are 98 students in grades 1-6; however, there are only 4 classrooms. Miss G. is the senior teacher and is a pro with Grade 1. She has been teaching at this school for at least 25 years. She even taught Tom’s supervisor Phillip when he was in Grade 1.

Grade 2 & 3 is a combined classroom and is taught by Ms. S. She is a force of nature and if I was a grade 2/3 student I would be petrified of disobeying her. This is not to say that she is a bad teacher. On the contrary she is very bright and knows her material very well and teaches with confidence. However, she is truly Jamaican in her teaching style which is very different from what I am accustomed to.

Grade 4 & 5 is also a combined classroom taught by Mrs. B. Mrs. B is awesome! She may not know everything but she works really hard to vary her teaching style and to challenge the students. She even spent her own money to purchase fun teaching aides including puzzles, flashcards, and an awesome board game. As far as I can tell buying teaching materials yourself isn’t as common among Jamaica teachers as it is American teachers. Though I could be wrong, I’ve only met a few JA teachers.

Last but not least we have Ms. J, grade 6 teacher and school Principal, as well as my supervisor. How she makes the dual job assignment work boggles my mind, and in reality the students do suffer when her administrative duties take her out of the classroom. What’s worse is that she knows the students suffer but there isn’t much she can do about it. She’s requested another teacher from the Ministry multiple times but there’s just not enough money. I try to help when I can but most of the time I cannot manage a whole class because students here are not very inclined to listen to the short white girl. I guess I’m just not intimidating enough! It also doesn’t help that they associate me with fun outdoor activities. But honestly that’s really ok with me.

And then there is ME! I have taken on the title of Environmental Education Coordinator, as well as Reading Room Advisor if you want to get fancy about titles. I was able to take over a classroom that was just being used to store nasty old furniture including desks, doors, a mattress box spring, and an old oven among other things. The school has asked the Ministry if they may dispose of the items but has been repeatedly told no because the items are Ministry Property and that the Ministry will take care of it. Yeah I’m pretty sure that stuff has been in there for years. Anyhow, I cleaned up the empty half and Ms. J provided me with a curtain to hang across the middle of the room so I don’t have to look at the pile of junk in the other half. Tom and I also cleaned out the bookshelves that frame the blackboard and we organized all the books by subject. Most are donated textbooks from the USA, though we also found a lot of old library books. What’s great is that now that the books are clean and easy to locate the teachers are using them as resources in their classroom. I also kept any science/natural history type library books I found in my room and now the kids spend a ton of their free time reading in my office/classroom. Really inspiring to see the students choose to spend time reading!

Lately at school we have been training for sports day on Feb. 8. This has been rather chaotic and I’ve been in a perpetual state of over-use induced laryngitis. These kids are just so excited to get out of the classroom and run around that it can be very challenging to wrangle them and perform any kind of organized training. However they still are out there running so I guess training is being accomplished one way or another.