More dudes!

Written 5/8/10

It seems that Morgan and I have been experiencing an exponential increase in fellow young ribelles (foreigners) on this island as we get closer to our departure time. When we arrived in August, there was no one else here who we could just casually hang out with besides WorldTeach volunteers when they would visit maybe once a month. Then around February 1, Michael Hayes, a middle-aged guy from New Hampshire, came to start teaching history at JHS, we enjoyed having someone else to talk to, but given the generation gap, he isn’t really the sort of person we’ve been inclined to become great friends with. Around April 1, however, Kenneth arrived, and we immediately hit it off. Now just last week, we had two new guys arrive. One is Sean Wren from Ft. Collins, Colorado, who will be teaching English and Biology at JHS starting next year. The other is Tim (I don’t know his last name yet), who is working for a company out of LA to farm coral for sale in fish stores back in the US. Both are in their 20s, which means now there are a significant number of people who Morgan and I really enjoy spending time with besides each other. At this rate, I fully expect to have about 8 guys, all in their 20s, show up the week before we leave here.

Sean came to teach English and Biology, but since finals are in 3 weeks, our principal decided not to try to re-arrange the schedule so that Sean teaches any classes this school year. He’ll instead be spending his month before summer break observing classes and substituting when other teachers are sick. I see this as a great opportunity to pass on all that I can about teaching science to him. I hope to give him a good idea of the level of the students he’ll be working with and what sorts of expectations he should have of them. With a month of just testing the water here, he should be all set to delve into teaching at the beginning of the 2010-2011 school year. It feels good to have some knowledge that I can pass on to another teacher in my final weeks here and at least in one tangible way, I can now say that I have made a difference at JHS that will carry over into the next school year. I’m sure Sean will be a great resource for the Dartmouth graduates who are placed here next fall, too. While I’m planning to meet the future JHS DVTP volunteers myself in Hanover in June, there’s only so much I can tell them about this place in a single afternoon meeting. So Sean will be in charge of repeating back everything I tell him this month to the new volunteers in August.