In this second year of service, I think I'm not alone in thinking about what I'm going to leave behind--what impact will my time here have? I hope that one of the biggest impacts I have is showing the kids that I work with that they are valuable, loved, and that there are adults who will listen to them and who will not beat them. I also hope that my students will be better readers and that they will want to continue to engage with books and learning after I leave. I also hope to leave the teachers with a literacy resource center with teaching materials and equipment that support them. So what has been happening in the last few weeks to help in laying these tracks?
Recently, I was working with one of my small groups and had so many "proud teacher" moments. We had spent the lesson working through a text that was challenging for them--I knew it was going to be a hard task. But we did a group reading together and they worked hard to sound out all of the tough words. Then I broke them out into pairs and they did another read through and looked for rhyming words (we had worked on rhyming earlier in the week). The top picture shows Faith and Liam reading together and trying to figure out if 2 words rhyme or not. The bottom picture is Faith using what we had written on the board earlier in the lesson to help Liam read "prancing". What made my heart just about burst is that Faith is totally acting like I do when we read hard words--using the ruler to point as we blend the word. 💓
Meet Beatrix the Bookworm (picture below)! After a very, very long time coming, I finally launched our incentivized reading program. Students read a book and then fill out a little piece to help build Beatrix's body. For every five pieces they complete, they earn little prizes. Much like teachers in the US, I bought these prizes with my volunteer stipend--so trust me when I say they are "little", lol. But it does motivate the kids--we kicked off just 2 weeks ago and as you can see, Beatrix is growing! I also have graphs tracking individual readers in each class posted on the library wall; at the end of each month the class with the most books read wins a class treat.
Another high point has been the amount of boys who are coming to use the library. Across the Eastern Caribbean, boys are behind girls in literacy. Generally, boys don't engage in reading as much as girls so one of my goals has been trying to find ways to get more boys into the library.
Side note: in addition to having my small group lessons during class times, I have open library hours before and after school and during lunch. It's been slow going, but this last week, I noticed more boys coming in for books. A bright spot was when two boys came in for books and then they asked if they could stay in the library to read the books. I took this as a victory!
I'm still trying to overcome some significant challenges to executing the work of my grant, but I've also reached the point where I've accepted the work might not happen and I'm ok with that. I've talked before about the lack of autonomy I have at work, which means that I am dependent on other people to get certain things done. There are parts that truly are out of my control and as much as I want the work to get done, wanting does not make it so.
And finally, it was Halloween last week! We don't celebrate it here (dead, undead, devil and all that) but I did participate in the social media trend of creating your Spirit Halloween costume. My fellow volunteers appreciated how on point it was--we have a lot of gallows humor here...
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