I didn't sleep very well last night, what with dogs barking,
wind and mosquitoes. We were picked up by 9 for a 9:30 meeting that started at
10. When we arrived we were greeted and introduced to a group of people who
were all union executive members, but then we were ignored until 10. The union
president spoke at length about the union in St Vincent and another member
outlined what the union does for membership. Being a member is not compulsory
for teachers and the executive are not released, they all have full day jobs
teaching and do the union business after hours as volunteers.
After that we took a short break and the union members left
and the co-tutors arrived, all nine of them! We were supposed to be a team of
four with four co-tutors, so we weren't sure what was up. We all introduced
ourselves and then Jimmy started the meeting and then promptly buggered off. He
was supposed to chair the meeting and did not. In fact he seemed like he really
didn't know what our agenda was and was unprepared. We soon realized that there
were two very strong willed aggressive women who had their own agenda. They
wanted the workshops to be around the basic subject areas and had little or no
interest in special education. When George broached it a couple of times they
listened for a bit and then tuned out. Because Jimmy was not doing his job and
George didn't feel it was his place, we watched and listened as the group of
nine divided into two groups. The two women started to draw and create a
timetable and subject areas for the workshops. When we got Jimmy back and we
refocused everyone, we asked Jimmy what the direction was supposed to be and he
finally said it was to be special ed, whereupon the one woman made a scene of
ripping up their work. Adding to the confusion was the fact that apparently
there is another workshop that is going to be run at the same site for ECE's
focusing on special education and some elementary teachers had signed up for
special education workshops. So there was a lot of confusion and chaos as there
were numerous conversations going on and no one really chairing the meeting.
Because we were supposed to be a group of four (Sandra bowed
out) we expected four co-tutors, but we had nine. We tried to clarify the
situation by asking who the co-tutors were. Turns out there were five and the
other four women, including the two strong ones, were members of the ministry
of education. We think they were trying to hijack the union workshops because
the ministry didn't have the time or money to run their own. Very confusing,
and tense. Finally when we went into another room with the co-tutors to start,
three of the other four women withdrew and left. The fourth decided to stay on
and see what was what.
So we had lunch, a box lunch brought in by the union and then
returned to the main room to begin some actual planning. After reading and
reviewing the itinerary and discovering that there was too much to do in two
weeks, we decided to narrow it down a bit. We will probably have three teams of
three, with one Canadian per team, and each team will prepare and deliver one
lesson per day to a rotating schedule of three groups. We did a bit of
preliminary planning but that is about as much as we accomplished in six and a
half hours! We will meet again tomorrow at 10 with the same group and hopefully
it will go more smoothly.
On the way home we stopped off at a grocery store to buy some
supplies for the guesthouse. Jane met us there and helped us. We spent $511! in
East Caribbean currency. Limited selection, little fruit and not much in the
way of vegetables.
When we got back we spent a couple of hours debriefing and
doing some planning and thinking. We came up with a couple of things that we
think might work and maybe how to divide the women into our groups. As we
talked about assessment I explained about my time capsule and both the others
thought it would be a good tool for teachers to begin to learn how to assess
kids and identify ones with difficulties.
We toddled off one by one by 10:30. I was the last to go.
The down side is
we can't travel by ourselves (for insurance reasons) and are therefore kind of
holed up until they take us somewhere. We are being picked up at 9:30 this
morning for the next planning session and then the union has something planned
for us this afternoon. They will also host us on the weekend and have some
outings planned for us, including climbing the volcano, hiking, and a boat ride
to one of the Grenadine Islands. Exercise wise I am pretty much at a loss, not
too much time, it's too hot to run and I can't bicycle. Plus everything is
either up or down hill and they are steep. Even walking down the hill means you
have to walk a long way back up. So I am on a hiatus and giving my body a rest
I guess. We are up on a steep hill overlooking the ocean. So we are isolated
here and there isn't really anywhere to walk and we are nowhere near a beach.
Hopefully we will find one of them on the weekend. The other annoyance is that
we are frequently serenaded by dogs and woken up by cows which are tethered in
the lot beside us. I think they are there to help control the vegetation. Ken
told us that the islanders are not really pet people, there are very few cats
and the dogs serve a purpose – discourage thieves.
No comments:
Post a Comment