Surviving Reading Groups

Today was a good day with my seventh graders, with everyone actually. I think part of it was being sick last week but it felt like the longest week ever. I only taught for 3.5 days with the teacher inservice on Friday and calling in sick on Monday, but it was the longest week ever. It made today seem a little daunting but I went in ever optimistic. I knew that we would be starting reading groups with my seventh graders, which meant that I was juggling a major routine change along with FOUR reading groups. I have another adult to help with one of the reading groups, but I still had to prep for it. (I handed him discussion questions and a list of vocabulary words for the reading assignment for the day.)

I've decided to keep it kind of uniform--the same reading skill activity but applied to different books. I never wanted to read Bunnicula and I still didn't want to. Surprisingly, it's a fun little story. I'm finally getting to read The Egypt Game and I love that there's a character named Melanie in it. I have a group reading The Giver, and thank goodness I've read that book in the last year or so. The other group is reading The Incredible Journey but I have Scott reading it with them. I want to read it but there actually isn't any extra copies of the book.

Here's to a better week. I do have past blogs to put up some time, but I just wanted to say a little something now. Yay for some classroom management success! (I think it helps that the kids like me even if they don't like reading or school or whatever.)

From New Heights

Last week at Enemanit with a bunch of boys from my seventh grade class. They literally push me to new heights :) Quite an accomplishment for me!

What time is it?

Apparently, I was too mathematical about the time question. Brady suggested I add time widgets. For the record, it was much more difficult figuring out how to add clocks on slower internet speeds, but success at last! I was a little sick today (fever and such). I taught through it (with modified lesson plans) and I am now feeling better (after a shower and a two hour nap). I will indeed be back to blog about my trips around the atoll (Enemanit and Eneko), teaching algebra and speech, what seventh grade boys and dogs have in common, and so on. It has been quite a full month. However, those time clocks took forever to figure out. Indeed, next time :)

Time is a Modular System

8/3/10

Call it the math teacher in me, but I found several different ways to easily figure out the time change between you and me. You can just take your time and add 22 (19, 18, 16 or 12) hours. You could also subtract 2 (5, 6, 8 and 12) hours and then add a day. Or, you can add 10 (7, 6, 4 or 0) hours and then just add 12 hours (or switch am to pm or pm to am). As a last resort, I made a little excel time chart for the Marshall Islands, Hawaii, the west coast, Utah, the east coast and Germany. The colored times are times when I expect to be awake compared with everywhere else. I find it interesting that if I had the need to include more cities in the eastern hemisphere (i.e. Abu Dhabi, Calcutta, Hong Kong, Guam etc) the pattern of colors would be reflected accordingly. I didn’t quite realize before that the Marshall Islands are exactly on the opposite side of the world from Germany. Feel free to use whatever works best for you.


I am living with a family right now until the new housing units are completed. I was concerned about imposing on their resources. As it turns out they have three bedrooms in their home, even though the third room still appears to be more of a storage room than a bedroom. All the children (as many as 10) sleep in the largest room on the three beds pushed together in there, and the parents are sleeping in the living room for now. They claim that it’s more comfortable to sleep in a large room, and as long as it is okay with them I feel good about it. Plus, they have four children going to the Co-op school. Two of their children are on scholarship and the tuition of the other two children will be waived as long as I am living with them. That pretty much made the decision for me. Anyway, I have my own room with a nice little closet, desk, bed and air conditioning unit. They offered to move a TV into my room but I declined. I can buy wireless internet cards for $10 for 100 minutes and there are quite a few wireless spots around the island. I can use skype from my laptop probably on the weekends to talk to people. You can also call me but expect someone else to answer the phone (maybe in Marshallese): 629-625-4379. (If you call on skype it’s just a couple cents a minute). I might be able to use wireless for free at a few spots with a purchase of food or beverage; we’ll see. I can use the dial-up internet in the school library after school hours for teaching resources and to email. Honestly, this might be the greatest adjustment that I need to make, greater even than the heat, the food and the pace of life. Even at my “Walden Pond” in Park City, I was able to make nightly phone calls and use the internet a few times a week, high speed at least once a week. I actually have Emerson here with me; a quotation would be nice right here but for some reason my lights won’t turn on and (er…) the sun hasn’t come up yet.

Keeping Dreams From Spoiling

7/31/10

And Melanie finally returns to the Marshall Islands, this time as Ms. Carbine instead of as Sister Carbine. I must admit that I was anxious to live in Delap again. It was my hardest area as a missionary as far as companions and mission drama went. I had much more success in Ebeye even though the living conditions were harder. When I came back to visit in May, it was Ebeye still that gave me that feeling of returning home. Besides that I just left my country, my family and people I love half a world away. …Autumn last year was so beautiful. Yet, after all my research into Marshallese wave navigation, I find it ironic that I return and leave my stick charts back in Michigan. This opportunity just popped up accidentally, maybe serendipitously. I was on vacation and found myself interviewing at a school that had just filled all its teaching positions. I had been in fact looking for teaching jobs in Maryland and Utah, but when I returned to Michigan almost a month later the principal of the Majuro Cooperative School sent me an email saying that a position had unexpectedly opened. I had about a week to decide. Of course, salary doesn’t compare to that in the United States but they bought my plane ticket out here, provide housing and utilities, and basically the experience I will garner here as a first year teacher is considerable.

I dreamed of serving a mission, and I did. I dreamed of teaching art, and I did it (on a mountain too). I dreamed of snorkeling in the ocean and swimming in a lake without fear, and I did it. I dreamed of teaching in the Marshall Islands, and I'm doing it. I dreamt of teaching math and yes I get to do that too. I'm in fact writing this on a plane headed to Hawaii. I'm living my dreams, fighting the good fight and still it is so hard. I told Georgia, one of my art counselors at Camp Cloud Rim in Park City, that I enjoyed working with her. Honestly, I was relieved to be leaving because managing an art room at camp was a ton of work. Yet, as I told her she was inspiring, I had to run off because I could feel the tears welling up. I rushed around to get everything ready. I was scribbling numbers down at the last minute because between weighing bags in the last hour I decided to give my SIM card and Blackberry to my brother. The rush and the stress kept me occupied but I noticed my brother's eyes were a little (just a little) watery. This is my brother—the guy carrying around my 50lb hockey bag without a second thought. That's when it hit me. I was already anxious to be leaving when I had just met Dan. I was already anxious to have my own classroom. But, saying goodbye to my brother. It wasn't even so hard when I went off to the Marshalls the first time as a missionary, and this time I have a computer, and skype, and books. But, it's so far away. Marshallese people think Americans are crazy to live so far away from their family.

And, then I read this about dreams on Paulo Coelho's blog:

"...The busiest people I have known in my life always have time enough to do everything. Those who do nothing are always tired and pay no attention to the little amount of work they are required to do. ...The truth is, they are afraid to fight the Good Fight..

..Because we don’t want to see life as a grand adventure, we begin to think of ourselves as wise and fair and correct in asking so little of life. We look beyond the walls of our day-to-day existence, and we hear the sound of lances breaking, we smell the dust and the sweat, and we see the great defeats and the fire in the eyes of the warriors. But we never see the delight, the immense delight in the hearts of those who are engaged in the battle. For them, neither victory nor defeat is important; what’s important is only that they are fighting the Good Fight.

...Life becomes a Sunday afternoon; we ask for nothing grand, and we cease to demand anything more than we are willing to give. ...‘When we renounce our dreams and find peace, we go through a short period of tranquility. But the dead dreams begin to rot within us and to infect our entire being. We become cruel to those around us, and then we begin to direct this cruelty against ourselves. ...And one day, the dead, spoiled dreams make it difficult to breathe, and we actually seek death."

(As a side note, I think one of my boxes hasn’t arrived in the Marshalls yet. I’m pretty sure that box contains some vitamins and the one Paulo Coelho book that I sent to myself.)

I'm living and breathing my dreams, fighting for them, finding new ones :) I'll come back triumphant, accomplished and ready to make new dreams. In the meantime though it'll be quite an adventure. I was filled with a sense of confirmation of this decision when I got here. Ramona woke up in the middle of the night to come with her parents to pick me up from the airport. They welcomed me with a Marshallese crown of flowers. Yes, the challenge ahead is daunting, what I stand to lose back home and the stacks to prove here, but this is too big of a dream to let die. I am happiest when I’m teaching. It would have been nice if I had remembered to send myself a lesson plan book. I believe I will be utilizing my laptop for something besides the internet for once.

I have time enough to do everything. Life is a grand adventure. And, I find it just a little easier to breathe.