M Smile

               Day 1 of volunteering was already incredibly humbling and rewarding. I went to a school down the street which only educates students that are deaf or have physical or mental disabilities. As soon as I arrived with 6 other volunteers, we were greeted by Sala, a deaf girl who was so excited that we were there, that she was running in circles giving everybody endless hugs. I was then placed in Class 1 which is equivalent to 1^st grade, but I was working with 10, 11, and 13 year olds that had some pretty severe mental disabilities as the levels of classes here are determined on ability rather than by age. We learned about the letter “I” and then sang some songs. I was so moved by the fact that these students were so inspired by singing a song as simple as “The Wheels on the Bus”. I can’t even begin to describe the way their faces lit up over something so simple, but it was amazing to witness.

                We returned back to the house after lunch, where I met with a local NGO that works with the most at-risk and needy students in the Suva school district. I had the opportunity to work with some of these students on Reading this morning at one of the local schools. Here, they practiced letter names, sounds, and sight words. Mary, the “Reading Recovery” teacher, asked if I would help with testing. I was impressed that Fijian schools used running records that are very similar to what we use in the U.S. to assess fluency (which I am constantly administering to my students!). After we finished testing, I asked Mary if she wanted help with determining the type of errors and with finding the accuracy rate. She looked at me, smiled, and said, “I don’t know how to do this. I taught myself about running records on the Internet.”

                I was floored by how much she knew simply by researching it online. I then explained to her how it works and helped her assess them. Then, we talked about what running records are used for and I told her that I would bring her some resources when I return. She was so excited to have more information regarding this as the only thing that she’s been going off of is the handful of books that she has. Because there are so few, many of her students have now memorized the words in the books because they’ve read them so often! (Allow me to send a HUGE thank you to all of my coworkers who provided me with a suitcase-full of books. Clearly, you can see how this will benefit this specific project!) I’m excited to spend time working on getting these materials together for her tomorrow.

                This afternoon, I went and worked with students that are in secondary school as they are, apparently, very low in their content areas and have been identified as needing extra tutoring in order to bridge the gap before they take their term exams in about 8 weeks. The first student I worked with was Alecio. We worked on his Social Science as he was having a tough time memorizing dates, vocabulary, and information from his notes. He was laughing at me as I came up with songs and dances to help him remember this information, but he can now tell me what blackbirding means (kidnapping) and when Fiji became a British colony (10 October 1874). Hey, however crazy he thinks I am, I’ll call that a win!

                I then worked with Ledz, a 17-year old, on his Math. We worked on the identity and inverse properties, exchange rates, and percentages. I was surprised that he didn’t know how to do basic multiplication and division. When I asked him why he wrote something down in his notes, he responded with, “I don’t know. My teacher wrote it on the board, so I copied.” I then asked if he understood something else, and he said, “No. There are too many children in the class to ask questions.” With that being said, when he finally understood percentages, his face lit up and he said something like, “Oh! I finally understand!” He was so excited, that he then asked to be my Facebook friend so that I can help him more in the future. BOOM!

Working with Ledz

                I also had the opportunity to observe Class 5 (about a 5^th grade level class) today. I found it interesting that during Math, they copied their notes from the supposedly “consumable” workbooks that they use year after year. In addition, they were sharing these workbooks among 2 or 3 students. There are many more things that I can talk about here, but I’ll just sum it up with the fact that the education system is very different here, but the majority of the people that I have worked with seem grateful to receive help. They keep telling me that I can teach them so much, to which I respond, “No – you can teach ME so much!”

                Lastly, you may be wondering what the title of this post means. Well, when I was working with some deaf students yesterday, I learned how to sign my name in Fijian. They learned how to spell it, but then it became difficult to spell M-E-G-H-A-N over and over again when they were speaking to me. Instead, they shortened it by calling me “M Smile”. One girl (who is not deaf) translated for me and said something like, “We are calling you M Smile because you have a good smile.” How beautiful, how inspiring, and how perfect of a reason to continue to smile while working with the wonderful students of Fiji!