"Patience is the ability to idle your motor when you feel like stripping your gears" -Barbara Johnson

 This was "planning week", the week before students come back where teachers come together to get ready for the academic year.  For me, it was a week of learning--about my school, the faculty, work culture, and myself.  

The week kicked off with prayer--the Eastern Caribbean in general is Christian, and prayer is a usual part of the school day.  I am not a Christian; during training we had several conversations about how to navigate these situations.  However, none really handled the situation where this was the first thing that you did together with your new colleagues (we hadn't even done introductions at this point).  I wasn't comfortable with the 1st thing out of my mouth to this group being "I'd like to not participate."   I'm going to make a slight detour here for the sake of background context.  There are several things about me that seem to confound a lot of St. Lucians--the fact that I don't eat bread, that I have no children, that I have no husband and don't want one, and that I have no religion.  So saying I didn't want to participate also opens up a whole conversation that I didn't want to have on DAY 1.   Back to my story: 

Each of us was given a bible passage or a word and we were to read that aloud and then offer up either a reflection on how the passage applied to teaching or offer up a prayer based on the word.  Mercifully I got a passage--I can read words and essentially apply those words to a situation--which is what I did.  

The rest of our days together were somewhat unstructured--like there wasn't a schedule or an agenda for any day.  At the end of the week, I found out that this was due to a confluence of events including the principal not feeling well and the Ministry of Education switching the dates/times of some mandatory zoom trainings.  I did appreciate having time to work with a smaller group of teachers while they were designing diagnostic tests to use during the 1st week.  I got to know more about the students in terms of where they are and what they might be needing help with.  I also really, really appreciate the fact that the school uses start-of-term diagnostics to design their curriculum and interventions.  But during the times that we were together, there were a lot of side conversations happening while the principal was talking (this seems to be the natural order of things, like no one seemed annoyed that this was going on), so I didn't hear a lot of things.  

Honestly, I am feeling quite unmoored right now.  This is the 1st time in decades that I have not been able to find work for myself--so I spend a lot of time not knowing what I should actually be doing.  I haven't been assigned to any task, teacher, or classroom and I basically still know nothing about the school. It's worth noting that several of my PCV friends have noted similar experiences this first week--all that to say I think this is normal.  The "common sense" part of my brain says "well yes, Amie this is all 100% reasonable because you have been there for 1 week."  Hence the opening quote this week--I just need to be patient.  Yes, I am ready to go and I want to jump into the work, but I need to slow my roll and be patient, listen, and learn--and all of this IS work.  

Some things about school/my school day right now.  I walk to work--it's just under a mile and has some steep hills on the way.  This means that I get to work soaking wet--but I feel somewhat better because the Lucian that I walk with is also soaking.  😆  I bring my lunch with me--which isn't different from when I was at home.  What is different is that I have no way to keep my lunch cold (i.e. no ice packs, no fridge) so I'm learning about options that I have for lunches.  BTW--if you have any ideas, I'm all ears--since I can't eat gluten, sandwiches are off the table as are cold pasta salads, wraps, and the like.  We get to school around 8:15 so that we can sit in the shade and try to cool off (relative term) before things start.  

This next week I will be making class visits to observe different teachers.  I'm also hopefully going to be administering some literacy diagnostic assessments and analyzing those data.  

I am looking forward to meeting students and also learning more about the school, the teachers, and the work in the week ahead!!  💗