Seventh Day Of Teaching - TV Show

Tuesday, July 23^rd. SEVENTH DAY OF TEACHING – TV SHOW

We arrived at school at the usual time. The ministry wanted to do four subjects, science, social studies, math, and Early Childhood Education. We knew that some of the participants had signed up for subject specific workshops and that they were all mixed up in the three classes because we focused on special education. So, after we took attendance in our regular rooms I had to call all three groups into one classroom and tell them what today would look like. We have five rooms available to us so we set up one subject in each of four rooms and assigned the ministry math lady to one, the ministry science lady to another, the social studies expert to a third and Wendy took the ECE group. The social studies guy did not show up so Eugena, Netta and Mavis supervised that until he showed up an hour and a half late.

We were to go to the local TV station for 10:00 but apparently they had a power failure and had to postpone. So, we hung around and watched what the co-tutors and ministry people were doing. I hung out at the computer lab for a bit where it was air-conditioned and talked to a couple of the participants. Talked to a 21 year old first year grade 3 teacher. I asked her if she had gone to teacher’s college and she said she will a year from September. So she will teach and learn on the job for two years before going to college. One of the co-tutors told me that she has had a couple of years of special education training in England and has a principal who knows nothing about special ed and criticizes her on her lesson plans, so she tells her principal not to write nonsense on her plans. It sounds like there is a lot of who you know rather than what you know when it comes to promotions.

Then the lunch for the participants showed up really late. There was a lot of complaining and a near revolt. Jimmy took most of the flack. Apparently the catering company had a vehicle breakdown.

Our lunch showed up early because we had our TV show rescheduled to 2:00. So we drove with Oswald and Vibert up, up, up a very narrow, winding road to the station. The view up there on a clear day would be amazing. It looks out over the city and all the way to Bequia and the other Grenadines. The other side of the hill looks inland. On the top of the hill there is a little public school. It would have been great to see inside but it is locked up for the season. The TV studio was very simple and low tech. They recorded on super VHS and had three small Sony cameras. Vibert was the host and George and I sat on either side and answered his questions about CTF and the workshops. I think we did very well again and were good spokespersons for CTF and Canada.

After that we drove back to the union offices to meet with three people we are to co-teaching with tomorrow. I will do HIV AIDS and water borne diseases with Rachel, a local expert; George will do gender equity issues with another local expert and Irnice is to do facilitating a workshop with the Social Studies guy, but of course he did not show up.

Then we had Wayne drive us downtown so that I could buy the St Vincent and the Grenadines shirt that I wanted in a souvenir shop. Irnice bought a couple of things too.

Finally back home for our own debriefing and for dinner. I decided to cook spaghetti for the troops. I defrosted the beef, cut up the onions, peppers, mushrooms and then opened the jar of sauce and found it was moldy!! We have no car and no access to any store anywhere near us, so I walked up the hill and borrowed a jar off of Alan, the British neighbour. He was glad to help out.

Dinner was great. Then the usual evening entertainment of typing, talking, preparing for workshops and reading. I have finished my book about the 6 drinks of man and the epilogue talks about how the new drink is water. The other chapters were all about how to drink something safe because water has been contaminated for most of our human history. Perfect for my water borne disease workshop!