"Average Families"

Teaching the infant 2 class was pretty interesting.  I had no idea what the lesson was going to be about.  As I explained in the last post, I lost a bet to Kristen Brenton and now I have to teach a lesson to her class.  However, she wouldn’t go into detail on what the lesson was going to be as the day approached.  When I asked, she would just say that I would write down the notes that are kept in a pink Barbie notebook and talk to the kids about what they just wrote.  I told Dr. Kubasko, as we walked towards the elementary school, the situation is shaping up to be wildly embarrassing.  That’s when he pulled out the video camera and just started laughing.  Since I didn’t know the lesson, I had this plan that I was going to tell the kids some wild story about fishing that my roommate Max told me once.  What six-year-old doesn’t find a high sea adventure exciting?  However, my plan was immediately shot down when we arrived when Kristen gave me the Barbie notebook and said that I had to teach the students about “average families.”  I couldn’t believe it.  What is this topic?  I remember the night before Kristen talking about how she had to introduce the three different types of families: rich families, average families, and poor families.  At the time, I told her how uncomfortable I would feel if I had to teach that information.  So the joke is on me apparently.  Kristen just laughs when she tells me the topic when I arrived to give the lesson.  I look at Dr. Kubasko and he just has this grin on his face.  

So, who are these average families you ask?  According to the notes, average families:

• Can afford their wants, but struggle with their needs
• Are your teachers and office workers
• Can manage their finances, but spend their money quickly

I was so close to saying, “Alright students let’s forget about average families and talk about fishing in the open ocean during a hurricane.”  I really wanted to tell this story, most of it being wildly exaggerated.  Instead, I decided to just roll with the situation even if I didn’t agree with the topic.  So the procedure goes, I write down the line, the students copy the notes, students give me a thumbs up when they’re done, I ask the class questions, and then we move onto the next line.  This is definitely not my style of teaching; however, as the lesson proceeded I found that I was having a pretty fun time.  The kids were being really cute.  When I would ask the kids if they were ready to move on, they would salute me and say, “Ai ai captain.”  One kid kept on making these silly faces.  The students loved answering questions, but to the point where they were saying things that had nothing to do with the question.  One kid told me his dad was a spy who hunted bad people, while another student told me that he ran his own computer repair shop.  Of course all this was captured on video.  From time-to-time, I would look up and see Dr. Kubasko with the little camcorder laughing.  He loved throwing me into a teaching situation I was not comfortable with.  I do not envy the elementary teachers.  While I had a good time teaching for 30 minutes, I can’t imagine doing that all day.  It definitely takes talent to be able to bring the material down to a six-year-olds level.  I have a hard enough time explaining complex biological concepts to the high schoolers.

Armadillo Tacos

It's hard to believe tomorrow will be my last day teaching at San Pedro High School. I've had a great time with the students. Yesterday was no exception.

I taught a lesson on Isaac Newton's first two laws of motion to the 2G Integrated Science class. During the lesson I had the students help demonstrate Inertia and Momentum. To show how mass affects momentum, I had one small and large student stand at one end of the room, while I stood at the other end. I told the students they were the objects in motion and I was the force that was going to bring them to rest. The students looked at me a little confused, so I told them to try to run through me. The smaller kid I was able to stop, no problem. The larger student, however, would be an amazing tackle on any high school football team. As the student prepared his assault, the rest of the class began laughing nervously. Admittedly, I was a little frightened; for good reason too. When I tried to stop the student, I literally bounced off him like I was being double-bounced on a trampoline. I flew off him right into the chalkboard and onto the ground. The students were dying with laughter. My placement teacher, Mr. Che, was clutching his stomach, doubled over laughing. When I brought the students back to attention, and still clutching my shoulder in pain, I asked the students how mass affects momentum. They immediately responded that the greater the mass the greater the momentum. It's all about finding ways to get the concepts across to the students, even if it puts my physical well-being in jeopardy.

The last class I teach every Wednesday is Earth Science. This Wednesday happened to be Earth Day, so I took the class on a beach clean. It's incredible having the beach literally yards away from the high school. The beach has been a great resource for my lessons. So, I go into the class and the exchange goes like this:
Me: "You know day it is today?"
Students: Silence.
Me: "It's Earth Day"
Students: Erupt in cheers, screams, and applause.
Me: "And you know what we're going to do?" Thinking they are not going to applaud when they hear that we're going to clean the beach.
Students: Silence
Me: "We're going to do a beach clean."
Students: Erupt in cheers, screams, and applause.

The students were all about doing a beach clean. It was hilarious. I had the students record each trash item and the material it was made from so we could make a graph later and talk about recycling. Half the class went south down the beach with me, while the other half went with Mr. Che north up the beach. My group was so excited about each piece of trash they found. They were acting as if each piece of trash was a hidden treasure.

As we made our way down the beach, news reporters from Ambergris Today stopped me to ask what we were doing. When I told them, they asked if they could take our picture. The students were so excited about the possibility of getting their photo in the paper. Some students held the garbage bag in the air and one pretended to drop garbage in as the rest of the students smiled around them when the photographer snapped the photo. When we got back to class, the students were bragging to the other group that they were going to be in the paper.

The groups did a great job. Both thirty gallon bags were nearly full. The students couldn’t believe how much garbage was on the beach. When we make the graph of all the garbage we collected, the students will be able to see the most common garbage items and material types. Also, the students will be able to see that the majority of the items can be recycled.

At the end of the day, my fellow teacher interns and I started working on one of our service projects as required by the internship. We are painting the San Pedro High School’s basketball court. This project has become quite the process. Kristen Trotter is heading up the project and has been doing a great job. I just go out there and she tells me what to do. I was painting and laying down tape for hours yesterday. Today, I’m sure I’ll be doing more of the same. The students are really excited about having a freshly painted court. Some have even lent their help to the project.

Satisfying the service project requirements has actually been a good time. The second week I was here, I helped build the cantina chef's new food shop, which is an extension off her house. I addition to painting the basketball court, we are adding to the school’s website and shooting a documentary about the high school. This week, we have been pretty busy with those three projects.

I have to go now to the elementary school where Kristen Brenton teaches infant 2, which is the equivalent of Kindergarten back in the States. I lost a bet to Kristen over the NCAA tournament, and now I have to teach a lesson to her students. I’ve never been so intimidated by six-year-olds before.

Just a quick side note: I ate armadillo tacos for lunch on Monday…absolutely delicious.

The Stage

Hello from Ak’ Bol, an eco-friendly resort north of the bridge in Ambergris Caye.  San Pedro High School is about two miles south of us.  I’ve been walking a lot this past week since we’ve arrived from our inland journey.  I actually just rented a bike.  It’s a comfortable beach cruiser with a bell and basket.  I couldn’t ask for anything more.  Just throw my backpack in the basket and I’m off to school.

It has been two days since we started teaching at the school again.  The only thing that seems to be different is that the kids are more rowdy.  After a two week holiday, the students’ energy is quite high.  While they remain as respectful as always (always with the sir and miss) they just can’t stop talking.  I find myself rearranging the seating in almost every class.  The exchange typically goes like this:

Me: “You guys in the back.”

The guilty students looking around at their neighbors as if I surely wouldn’ be talking to them.

Me: “Yeah you two, there are a couple open seats right up in front here I know you want to sit in.

Students: “Yes sir.”

Students shuffle to their new seats.

Problem solved, usually.  This one student refused to move, and when I insisted he walked to the front of the class crossed his arms and leaned back against the chalk board.  The rest of the class started hooting and hollering.  He loved having the stage to show off in front of the students. 

The stage is a funny thing.  Students will act like they can say and do anything they want when the other students are watching them confront the teacher.  However, take that stage away and the student will typically drop the performance.  I ran into this situation a lot with my class back in Wilmington, especially with my general biology 4^th block class.  I quickly learned that it was fruitless to argue or confront a student in front of the rest of the others.

So I asked the student leaning against the chalk board to step outside with me for a second.  After our conversation, during which the student was quick to apologize, he was all about participating in the class.  Even today in class, he was asking questions, and in general, fully in engaged in the lesson.

The similarities between my students here and from back home have been one of the most interesting aspects about teaching abroad.

Cave's Branch

When the bus pulled off the highway onto a narrow dirt road leading into the jungle, I knew that our stay at Cave's Branch was going to be adventurous.  When we arrived, we were directed to a group of thatch huts situated above a dried out river bed.  I can only imagine how beautiful the surroundings are during the wet season when the river is full and the many orchids are in bloom.  Anyway, Cave's Branch was gorgeous and wild. 

Soon after our arrival, we headed down the road to the Blue Hole.  The Blue Hole is a 25 foot deep sink hole at the base of a cliff in a river in the middle of the jungle.  At the bottom of the hole, a cave extends into the mountain which allows the river to continue on.  It's quite striking to come upon this scene when you come down the mountain path.  The entire area is full of limestone, which is a porous rock.  Water seeps into these pours and eventually saturates the rock.  When this occurs, a sink hole develops, which is how the Blue Hole formed.  For an hour, the Blue Hole was our little oasis in the jungle.

When we first arrived, we were warned of the many snakes in the area.  Apparently this year they have encountered more snakes than any other.  The Fur De Lance we were told is the most common in the area.  The Fur De Lance blends perfectly into the ground and boasts some of the most potent venom in Central America.  To make matters worse the Fur Del Lance is highly territorial, extremely aggressive, and most active at night.  All these factors were in the front of my mind as I took the two hour long night walk through the jungle.  However, I was more worried about another creature during that hike, the infamous Bot Fly.  The Bot Fly feeds on mosquitoes.  Good thing right?  Wrong, while it feasts on Mosquitoes, the Bot Fly also lays its eggs on mosquitoes.  When the mosquito feeds on other animals, such as humans for example, the larva enters in the mosquito's bite wound or simply enters via the pores.  Once inside you, the Bot Fly Larvae grows as it feeds on your body.  If left untreated, a fly will eventually hatch from your skin.  Sounds wonderful right?  

Now, there are many ways to get rid of the growing larvae most of which involve suffocation.  However, the most gruesome, which I'm sure you all want to hear about, is when you apply Vaseline over the larvae's air hole.  When applied, the larvae will begin to eat its way out of your body through the Vaseline.  To see exactly how one goes about removing the Bot Fly larva using duct tape, please refer to this delightful video shot by biologists in Panama.  Disclaimer: Do Not Watch if you are faint of heart, and, as can be imagined, there is good bit of profanity.

So, after the tour guide, Alex, for the night walk tells us about the Bot Flies in the area, he proceeds to show us the larva that is growing in his arm.   Alex has named the larva Pablito.

The next day, some of us went on the waterfall hike.  I was expecting a long hike into the jungle where we would see waterfalls along the way.  Instead the hike in the jungle led to a cave where in are the waterfalls.  The cave was riddled with insect and fruit bats.  Bat holes are all over the cave roof.  The acid from the bat guano bores a hole into the limestone so after hundreds and hundreds of years deep holes form into the cave roof.  At one point in the journey, the cave ceiling got really low so that we had to crawl.  I typically don’t have a problem with claustrophobia, but there were moments where I had to tell myself to keep it together. 

There are a number of animals in the cave apart from the bats.  At the mouth of the cave, large rodents called Agouti can be found.  Agouti are locally called the royal rat because when the queen of England visited Belize, she was fed Agouti.  Apparently she thought it tasted pretty good.  Catfish, cave eels, and crayfish are found in the cave’s waters.  The cave also is home to cave crickets and scorpion spiders.  Scorpion Spiders look terrifying.  Thankfully they are not venomous, but dear god they look like they can do some serious damage.

So, the water starts getting deeper and deeper until eventually we are swimming through the cave.  We reach the first waterfall after traveling about 2 miles into the cave.  Once we scaled all three waterfalls, the guides said that it was time to go back.  Instead of climbing down the waterfall, we were told to jump.  This was no problem until we reached the final and highest waterfall.  I’m first in line, so I go up to the edge peer over and see this small pool I have to jump into.  I maybe had about a 5 foot area to hit.  If I missed, I’d land in shallow rocky water.  Thankfully I made it, but one guy actually hit his back on the rock.  He just got grazed, but he seemed to be in some pain.

When we reached the entrance of the cave, it was really strange seeing sunlight again.  We were underground for about 5 hours most of it spent in the water.

On the Mainland

I have gone inland folks.  It has been two days since I first arrived to the mainland and already I've swam in a limestone sink hole found in a river in the middle of the jungle, trekked the jungle in the middle of the night, and traveled 3 km down into a cave system in which I scaled three waterfalls all of which I jumped off on the way back.

After we took the boat from San Pedro to Belize City, we hopped into a bus and traveled to Cave's Walk, an adventure resort.  Along the way, Belize revealed its other beauty: the tropical forest landscape.  From the reef lined beaches we soon found ourselves traveling steep roads winding around sharp jungle covered mountains.  The pictures I took along the way do no justice to what my eyes saw.  The sprawling jungle was dotted with little villages.  People were walking along the two lane highway often carrying heavy loads.  In place of the raccoon, dog, cat, or deer road kill from back home, here monkeys seem to be the most common victims.  I heard of a place in southern Belize that actually set up a monkey "highway" in which wooden paths were placed above the roads.  The system apparently is working very well.

Monoculture crops would suddenly appear along the drive in place of the jungle and extend out as far as the next mountain would allow.  Last semester I took a tropical rainforest ecology class in which I learned about the various farming practices in the tropics and their ecological effects.  Monoculture crops are the most common agriculture practice where one crop is harvested on a plot of land.  Corn fields are an example of monoculture farming. This agricultural practice has the greatest impact on biodiversity in that it greatly reduces the habitat animals would typically have in the forest.  While the same amount of land is present on these monoculture fields, the structure of the forest is greatly reduced.  If you have just one type of plant growing over a plot of land you have only two structures: the ground and the plant.  However, in a forest you have many different types of trees growing at all different heights.  This variation in tree structure creates a greater amount of potential habitats for animals to live in and therefore results in higher biodiversity.  Ecologists, whose goal is to preserve biodiversity, support what is known as polyculture agriculture or Agroforestry.  Agroforestry is the farming practice where multiple crops are grown among one another on the same plot of land.  Underneath a Cacao  (chocolate) Tree for example, coffee plants can easily grow in the shade.  Ever hear of shade grown coffee?  These polyculture plantations mimic the structure of the forest more closely than monocultured farm land.  While ecologists would prefer to see the forest untouched, the reality is people need to be able to feed their families; so when working to maintain biodiversity, Agroforestry is able to provide structural diversity that monoculture farms are unable to while maintaining the farmer's economic well-being.  

I've started on the topic of Agriculture and its ecological impact, so I might as well press on (this is a science blog after all). There is a third farming practice that has been occurring for thousands of years here in Belize and across the world.  In Belize it is known as Milpa farming, in Africa it is called Swidden Farming, but is commonly known as Slash-and-Burn Farming.  Milpa agriculture is the farming method practiced by the indigenous people in Belize.  Farmers will have numerous plots of land where only a few are in use.  The plots that are not in use once were, but when the soil's fertility was depleted, the plot was abandoned.  When a plot of land's soil is depleted of nutrients, the farmer then will move to a plot that was abandoned a long time ago.  The abandoned plot of land is now covered completely with plants and the soil is now fertile again.  The farmer burns all the plants growing on the plot giving the soil an additional shot of nutrients.  The farmer will then plant his crop on this plot of land until the soil looses its fertility and the cycle continues.  This practice is ecologically friendly in that the unused plots of land are overgrown with forest plants.  But, what is becoming more and more common as the modern world is financially stressing these indigenous farmers, the unused plots of land are not being left to become overgrown for long enough, which typically takes 30-40 years.  Now what is happening is the plots of land are being left alone for about ten years meaning the habitat structure is reduced, soil fertility is still low, and the farmers have to move between more plots over a smaller period of time all of which reduces bioiversity.  For ecologists, who are trying to preserve biodiversity, all of these changes in Milpa farming are further complicated by economic, political, and local cultural issues. Managing the biodiversity of an area of land is no easy task.

I thought I saw one of these Milpa plots on the drive to Cave's Branch.  A field was burning, and when people started to inquire about the reason for the fire I quickly responded, "It's part of the farming system here."  The bus driver quickly set me straight though.  It's the dry season here in Belize and the temperature has been consistently in the mid to high 90's.  The field was simply burning because the dried out plants had caught fire from the intensity of the sun's heat.  As I sit here now in San Ignacio, the day after we left Cave's Branch, I look out from our hill-top vantage point and see smoke rising from the forest.

From the start of this post I intended to talk about the adventures I experienced at Cave's Branch, but it quickly turned into a discussion on agricultural ecology.  I apologize to those readers whose eyes welled up from boredom.  I will dedicate the next post to the excitement that ensued at Cave's Branch.

First Week Of Teaching

I know it's been a while since I last posted.  For all of those who have been wondering what I've been doing (mainly my mother) I've been thrown to the Belizean Jaguars you could say.  We started doing observations the first Monday into our trip and took over that Thursday.  Now when I took over, I completely took over.  We each have teachers we are placed with and whose classes we teach.  I am working with Mr. Joaquin Che who teaches Integrated Science and Earth Science.  On Thursday I took over both classes for Mr. Che.  Some of the other teachers have a more hands on approach to integrating us into the classroom, but when I told Mr. Che my ideas for the lessons he told me to just jump on in.  So starting that Thursday and into the rest of the next week I was teaching all day everyday.  I teach on average 6 classes a day with approximately three preps.  Even though I'm teaching two subjects, the reason for the third prep is because some of the classes have a staggered schedule in that even though it's Wednesday for example I'll be teaching them Thursday's lesson.  It took a bit to understand the schedule, but by the end of the week I was getting the hang of things.

The Integrated Science class is pretty much a general science course taught to the second form students.  Second form is the equivalent of sophomores in high school.  Each form is further divided into groups a-g, and each group has their own classroom.  That means the teachers move from room to room to give their lesson.  This is very different from back at New Hanover High where I had my own classroom and the students moved between their classes.  However, there is a problem of too many teachers and not enough rooms in many of the high schools in Wilmington.  The teachers who don't have their own room are given a cart and have to move between rooms.  The topic I covered for Integrated Science during the first week was Energy.  During the lessons I taught students about Potential and Kinetic Energy, the Law of Conservation, and the different forms of energy.  When we talked about the transformation of energy, I had the kids build roller coasters.  The kids worked in groups of five and using wire insulation, duct tape, and marbles built a roller coaster that had a hill, a turn, and a loop.  The kids loved it.  For the project the students had to diagram their roller coaster, label the places where the most kinetic and potential energy are, list the different forms of energy given off when the marble rolls through the track, and come up with a name for their roller coaster.  When the groups were done setting up their track and adding additional designs such as tunnels and other bits of decoration, I had each group demonstrate their roller coaster to the rest of the class.  The students got really into the project.  When the marble would successfully roll through the entire track for the first time the groups would burst into cheers.  I think the students don't often get to do projects where they work in groups and do projects where they have to figure out things for themselves.  The students are more accustomed to a more teacher centered instruction than a student centered one.  At the end of the lesson I had students write down the things they learned, the things they are confused about, and what they want to know more about.  From the students' responses, I got the impression that they really enjoyed be given the opportunity working in groups to figure out a problem.  For the rest of the time I am teaching here, I am going to try to continue this student centered inquiry learning approach.