Thiefing some Mollyapples

Belize City Bus Terminal

So I finally got into PG at 9pm on Tuesday after taking the regular through Belmopan instead of the Express straight down the coast. Despite the length of the trip, we actually ended up going down the Hummingbird Highway through the Maya Mountains, which was terrifically scenic when I wasn’t sleeping. In PG I got dropped off at the University of Belize where Mr. Nolberto picked me up.

The Nolbertos are a cute little SPCS family. Marion is the director of Curriculum and Supervision, which makes him the chief disciplinarian. That means that about 80% of his day is occupied with my Standard VIers. Not only are they the most rambunctious, but they also have Secondary School placement exams (English in March, Math in May). Patricia is a quiet Keckchi Maya who teaches Infant II (2nd Grade). Stefan is 10 and Camille is 8. They’re both adorable. The whole family is adorable.

The Nolberto home

My first day at SPCS was anticlimactic enough. The Standard VIers had to come to school early today to write essay exams. When I arrived, they were hard at work, so I said hello to the teachers went to the office and stapled some worksheets together. Guess who got to grade the essays.
My second day afforded me and the two other interns an orientation on SPCS from Mr. Nolberto (more on SPCS later). Yes, there are two other interns here, although both of them are in Infant II. Kristie is from U of Minnesota, Duluth with 8 other teaching interns spread all over PG. She was originally supposed to be at St. Ben’s but they accidentally dropped her off at SPCS and here she is. Lauren is from University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada (to find out how amazingly ridiculous this is, ask Josh Lee) and is actually in Patricia’s class. We’re very grateful to be in such an organized school that knows what to do with interns, especially since the other Minnesotans are at places like St. Ben’s and Toledo Community College (despite the name, it’s a secondary school) were just put in classrooms on their own with no supervision, no introduction, and no direction. Meanwhile, my lesson plan on subject-verb agreement is due to Mr. Nolberto on Monday.

Yeah, it looks like Standard V Confirmation is out, with the PSEs (Primary School Exams) looming on the horizon (sorry, Kathy). I now appear to be the lead Reading Comprehension teacher for the 100 or so students in the three Standard VI classes. Of course, I will constantly be under the watchful eye of Mr. Nolberto and the three Standard VI teachers. However, it was only in my third class that my supervising teacher was called into a meeting and I was stuck with a classful of students and a short Spanish lesson. The kids played all the usual “test the sub” tricks (“Sir, Ms. Martinez lets us walk around the class” “My name is Banana, sir”) and I played my usual hardass who would rather come across as condescending than be fooled. I hate doing that and yet I know my three months would be down the crapper if I let the students run all over me on the first day. Also, don't worry, being left on my own is not going to be a regular occurance.

Thus, the teaching adventure begins. Thanks for joining me.

Claver school STD V and VI block

Yeah, my classroom looks out onto the Gulf of Honduras

Reflection:
It’s funny how much you can learn about someone from their writing. As with any class there were some standouts and some stinkers among the essays that I graded. The most common mistake was incessant shifting of tenses but what nagged me the most were the words Mollyapple and thief (pronounced "teeve"). The prompt that a vast majority of students chose to use was to write a story based on a picture of a boy picking red fruit out of a tree over a “No Trespassing” sign. While most students agreed that the fruit were apples (with one obstinate cherry dissenter), quite a few students called the fruit Mollyapples (or Moliapples or Marlyapples). I’ve never heard of Mollyapples but enough students referenced them for me to figure that they are not just some made-up fruit. I hadn’t been at school for an hour before my first hurdle with cultural competency. Awesome.

The second big word was the use of thief as a verb such as in “I thiefed the Mollyapples from the tree”. While I assume that the proper verb to use in this context is “stole”, these students have probably only ever used or heard thiefed except in movies. I didn’t invent the English language and I’ve only been using it about seven years longer than my students have, so who am I to tell them that a word in their everyday vocabulary isn’t a real word just because some white guys in Oxford said so? Yet, I know that the placement exam is in Queen’s English, not Kriol.
Is that unfair? Mostly. Did I make the rules? Hell no. Am I playing into the system? Yes, I marked thiefed wrong every time I saw it. I wish I didn’t have to, but for these students to make it to Secondary school I have to.

I think it’s really important to understand and try to work past all of this PostColonial theory crap (the whole purpose of my blog) because the world is still reeling from colonization and has taken for granted most of its bs systems and ways of thinking as the way the world has always worked. However, I’m not going to bear the entire burden of that horrible legacy. I’m a soldier against this crap, not the messiah. I don’t have the answers. By playing into the system I help to prop it up, but I also can be instrumental in tearing it apart from the inside. That’s what I think understanding is all about. Tearing it apart from the inside doesn’t mean I’m not going to ignore all the thiefeds. For me, at this point in my life, I don’t know what it means exactly. But it sure means something good (or bad if you are a colonial oppressor or elite educator).

Whatever the case, if I have to read one more essay about apples, I’m going to thief a gun and shoot myself.