Grand Goave: Week Three

Going into the week I was under the impression that I would again be without a translator.  Sunday night I received the wonderful news from Sora and Adam that this would not be the case.  Jeanide, who I worked with in Port-au-Prince, had managed to find time in her busy schedule to make the trip east, to help me throughout the week.  She left Monday during the morning and arrived when I returned from school. I thanked her greatly for coming on such a short notice and began to lay out my lesson plans for the week. 

Tuesday I decided that I would introduce the scientific method to both classes by using the same sound experiment I used at Cazeau.  The experiment is very simple.  Line up 4 glass bottles each with a different amount of water in it, then ask the students which bottle will have the lowest pitch.  Asking a question is the first step of the scientific method.  Next is to do research.  For this I had the students pull up the Wikipedia page on sound, and they did a little bit of reading.  The class came to the consensus that sound is a wave, and the different amounts of water would cause different pitches.  Step 3 the kids formed a hypothesis.  All guessed that either 1 or 4 would have the lowest pitch.  Step 4 we performed the experiment and found that bottle 4 had the lowest pitch. The class then recorded their results for step 5, and for step 6 we drew a conclusion.  As the amount of water increases, the pitch decreases.  Not a ground breaking experiment to say the least, but definitely simple enough to convey the proper procedure when doing scientific investigation. 

Wednesday I had planned to teach a music class with Mistro.  He is the piano player in the church’s band and he could definitely teach the kids one or two things about how to read and play music.  He has been terribly unreliable during my time here, but I figured if I gave him a chance to teach something he truly loved, that maybe he would take some initiative and show up.  Once again he let me down.  It was 10 O’clock and time to start class.  He was nowhere to be found.  Instead of proceeding I decided to take the lesson in a different direction.  Watching the kids type up their reports the day before, I noticed that very few knew the proper typing technique.   I drew a blown up picture of a keyboard on my whiteboard and demonstrated the proper hand positions.  The XO’s have typing software, and I set aside the first hour of class toward practicing their newly acquired skill.    For the older kids, I let them do with the last hour of class whatever they pleased.  To my surprise many continued playing the typing game.  A few students switched over to chat, but a few others explored the depths of Wikipedia.  Seeing the kids independently choose to practice typing, or read articles is a wonderfully reassuring feeling.  It shows that they really are thirsty to learn, and it’s an honor to provide them with tools that can quench that thirst.

I wanted to go out of Grand Goave with a bang, I wanted to give the kids something that they would remember.  I definitely did so at Delmas 28 when I did my rocket lesson, and I wanted to give Mission of Hopes students a similar experience. Thursday I explained the basics of rocketry.  I lead with gravity, talked about the vinegar and baking soda fuel, and then went into aerodynamics.  I had the kids draw up some designs on paint so they could get a better idea of what we would be building Friday.  Many struggled to work to overcome the touchy paint software, but I went around and helped get everything in working order.  In the end we had some wonderful designs. A couple of students finished very quickly and agreed to design a new one even better.  I let them be and came back 10 minutes later to discover that they had copied a picture of the Columbia Spaceshuttle from their offline digital library, and pasted it into paint.  I appreciated the resourcefulness and congratulated them on their designs.  They even added their own artistic touches.  

Friday came and it was time to turn these students into rocket stars.  All the supplies were in order and I distributed them to the two teams.  The kids opened their XO’s and used their schematics as reference.  The older kids worked especially well together and were efficient with all their resources, the younger kids not so much.  The teams wrapped up and added their finishing touches.  We went into the graveled area next to where we held class and I prepared the fuel.  The teams formed a circle around and eagerly awaited their flights.  We shot off one rocket after the other and the kids cheered with delight at their successes. 

The day came to an end and I said my goodbyes to the class.  Friday was my last day teaching in Grand Goave and I truly will miss the students of MOH. These 3 weeks have meant a lot to me and not just because of the lessons I have taught.  Grand Goave gave me the chance to really get to know a group of kids, some on a very deep level.  Last week I introduced you to my friend Johnsley.  He is a 14 year old boy who aspires to be both a pastor and a doctor.  He has decent English skills, and he and I talked a lot and became very close.  He stopped by the beach house on Saturday so that we could say our final goodbyes. Tuesday I gave him an English bible and an English to Creole dictionary.  He left me with a letter that he wrote thanking me for being his teacher and his friend.  It’s something that I will cherish forever. Below is Johnsley with his rocket design. I wish him and all of his classmates the best of luck.

Tomorrow I head back to Port-au-Prince to do some teaching and server repair at Cazeau.  It has been an absolute pleasure to teach here in Grand Goave, but there is still plenty more work to be done at plenty of other schools.  I look forward to teaching and making more friends along the way.

Hang on,

Sean   

    

Grand Goave: Week Two

So week 2 ended up being a shortened school week due to a Haitian holiday.  October 17^th is a national holiday to commemorate the death of Haiti’s founding father Jean-Jaques Dessalines.  This definitely seemed to be a strange thing to celebrate, but it makes sense when you come to understand the Haitian affinity for the afterlife and the role that spirits play in their culture. 

After approaching Renee about my translator issues I was bounced back to Lex to work something out.  He assured me that if he and I talked to Mistro he would be there to help me throughout the week.  We did just that but yet again I only had a translator for one of my classes.  In Haiti there doesn’t seem to be the same sense of urgency that I am accustomed to.  This especially holds true in the laid back beach town of Grand Goave.  A lot of the people here have some serious stresses on their mind, so it’s understandable that they don’t let the day to day work load overwhelm them.  The task will eventually get done, and it’s more important to try and enjoy the ride.  This low-pressure work ethic is a widely accepted cultural norm.  As an outsider who hops around from place to place, I find this to be an incredibly difficult practice to work with.  My time here is limited, and I feel a strong sense of urgency to accomplish all I can in my stay.   My enthusiasm seems to rarely be shared, and it’s a cultural hurdle that I still struggle to overcome.  I will spend the last week again working with Mistro when he shows up. 

This past week at school did not go as I had planned, but I definitely think I made progress.  Mistro showed up for Tuesday’s class with the older kids, and we worked primarily with Wikipedia.  I spent Monday preparing a series of questions pertaining to different articles that are featured on the preloaded software.  The articles have been translated into French.  Although very few kids speak French, the languages are similar enough to where they can read and comprehend the material.  The questions were basic, but difficult enough to where the students would not know the answer off of the top of their heads.  “What is the distance from the earth to the sun?” “What year was the philosopher Socrates born?” “What is the boiling point of water?”  Mistro and I would pose one question at a time to the class, the first team to answer correctly earned a point.  The school currently does not have Wi-Fi, but with the preloaded software the kids are still able to access a good amount of information.  The purpose of the game was to get them accustomed to this method of research, and to give them an idea of how much information they can find on there.  I truly believe in the power of information.  Their minds are not just exposed to facts, they are exposed to ideas.  These ideas can definitely excite, but more importantly ideas can inspire.  I love the power of ideas, and it was a wonderful feeling to open these kids up to a whole new world of information.  Team 4 dominated when it came to finding the answer first, but I made sure not to advance until every kid had found the answer.  It was great to see the kids excited to find the answer, and excited to show their classmates how they could do the same. 

The next few days I was again without any translating help.  I’ve acquired a decent vocabulary in Creole, but not nearly enough to lead my own classes.  I let the kids work with their laptops independently and provided insight when I could.  Monday’s lesson plan seemed to stick, and I found that many of the students used their freedom to continue exploring Wikipedia.  I walked around and gladly helped out trying to explain some of the more complex articles that kids stumbled upon.  One student on Tuesday ended up on the Wikipedia page for Earth’s Magnetic Field.  The pictures were failing to load so I drew my own diagram and used my English and Creole knowledge to lead them through the French text.  Having my phone came in handy as I was able to look up French and Creole words that I was unsure of. 

Thursday one of the older girls in my class was reading about Switzerland for whatever reason, she then hoped over to the page of Geneva, CERN, and then the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).  For those who don’t know CERN is an international science community based in Geneva, Switzerland.  Their major project is the Large Hadron Collider, which is a particle accelerator.  The LHC shoots particles around their 17 mile loop at near the speed of light and crashes them together in order to study subatomic particles.  I definitely did not expect to be explaining particle physics on my trip to Haiti, but you can never predict where a kid’s curiosity will take them. 

I was also able to share my passion for philosophy with one of my students named Johnsley.  Johnsely is an undersized soft spoken 14 year old boy with a sharp mind and a decent command of the English language.  He approached me during class and asked if I would join him on the Chat app so that he could speak with me and practice his English.  I pulled out my XO and we began talking.  It started out as small talk, but then I decided to ask him what his plans were for after high school.   He proceeded to tell me about how he wants to become a pastor so that he can go all over the world and preach the good news.  He also wants to become a doctor to take care of the sick.  He’s an ambitious kid, and you can tell he wants to help people in every way he can.  We went on to talk about some basic philosophy over the course of two days, and I introduced him to the Euthyphro Dilemma and then we talked about Divine Command Theory.  I plan to leave Johnsley with an English to Creole dictionary along with a bible so that he can pursue his passions.  I wish him all the best. 

Friday as I said earlier was a Haitian holiday so no school was in session.  I still had some students hanging around wanting to use the laptops though so I was happy to pull them out.  This caught the attention of some of the construction workers who were taking a break.  They asked if they could try one out and I let them have a go.  The two were fascinated by Wikipedia and got to reading about engineering, appropriate given their profession.  The kids worked with each other showing off all the cool things they have learned how to do on their XO’s. Here Stanley, the little boy, is being shown how to play the piano by an older classmate. 

None of the students lack curiosity and that is something that excites me when it comes to teaching them.  It’s frustrating that I am not receiving as much help as I would like, but I don’t intend to let that discourage me from teaching in any way I can.  Not having a translator has forced me to pick up a lot of creole and has led to me interacting with the students one on one.  Through this I’ve formed some great relationships that I will cherish for a long time.  This week I look forward to strengthening those friendships and sharing as much knowledge as I am able to. 

Hang on,

Sean     

Grand Goave: Week One

I arrived in Grand Goave Sunday October 4^th at around 5pm via bus.  The driver dropped me off at the main intersection just over the bridge that separates the farmland from the town.  I unloaded my stuff and hopped onto a motorcycle to take me to the school.  Now I’m not a big fan of motorcycles, but if you want to get somewhere and you don’t want to wait, they are the way to go.  After some arguably illegal maneuvers by my driver, we arrived at the school/church grounds of Mission of Hope (MOH). 

MOH is an organization run by Pastor Lexidon Edme, and his wife Renee.  They’ve been working in Haiti for a long time and have some amazing support from both inside and outside of the country.  The school teaches several hundred kids ranging from toddlers to young adults, some older than myself.  Majority of the funding comes from sister parishes back in the states, and there is no lack of support.  The school has 25 XO laptops, 40 Kindle tablets, and is currently constructing a computer lab and a dance studio.  It’s definitely a drastic change from the schools I worked at in Port-au-Prince. 

Upon my arrival I was greeted by Renee who was the person coordinating my accommodations for the week.  We said our pleasantries and then she introduced me to her husband pastor Lex.  Lex is a formidable figure in his community and he receives tons of respect.  It’s hard to go anywhere with him and not get stopped every five seconds by people wishing to say hello or ask questions.  Lex gave me a brief tour and along the way we bumped into another Blan (Haitian word for white person).  His name is Laramie and he was accompanied by his twin daughters of about 10 years.  Laramie and his family are traveling missionaries who recently moved to Haiti.  He and his wife Amy have 4 kids ages 10-15.  They are currently working at the orphanage up the road and wanted to check out the school that some of their kids attend. 

The tour was over and it was time for “Sunday night worship”.  Laramie overenthusiastically invited me to sit with him and I obliged.  Now I’m not religious, but at the same time I’m not anti-religion.  I was raised catholic and have no problem attending mass.  But Haitian mass is not quite like American catholic mass.  Scriptures are read, Eucharist is shared, and praise is given, but with a different sense of urgency.  Pastor Lex stepped up to the mic and delivered a sermon that conjured up more excitement than I ever remember from Father Mike back at St. William. Arms were raised towards the sky, hands were clapping, and hips were swaying as the spirit of his words fell over the room.  It was slightly uncomfortable being the only one not overwhelmed by the holy spirit, but nevertheless it was a sight I’m glad I saw.

Mass came to an end and as a group we headed back to the house where I’d be staying.  After a 15 minute ride down a street that reminded me much of Green Lake Road, we arrived.  The gate rolled open and we pulled in.  I stepped out and took in the incredible view.  Grand Goave is an ocean town, and MOH is arguably the best place to take in the beauty of it all.  Mountains to the west, mountains to the east, and an island sits on the horizon to the north.  I dipped my feet in the water, grabbed some dinner, and then went back to my room to prepare for the week I had ahead of me.             

Grand Goave has been a much more regimented schedule.  Wake up at 6:30, get ready, eat breakfast, make lunch, and then go to school.  From 10-11:30 I’ve been teaching a group of high school kids. Then I wrap that class up, charge the laptops, and teach a younger group from 1-2:30.  The translator the schools provided me with has been far from reliable so it’s been hard to teach drawn out lessons.  So far out of the 10 classes I’ve taught he showed up to 1.  In that one class period I did an activity where as a class we took some measurements with a homemade apparatus and estimated the size of the sun. The math was troubling for some, but we managed to work through it and by the end everyone had their own estimate. http://cse.ssl.berkeley.edu/AtHomeAstronomy/activity_03.html . The younger kids have been a much bigger challenge.  A lot of the kids just see the laptops as gaming devices.  Although they do have some educational games programmed on, they are much more than that.  With only 25 laptops it’s been a struggle every day to have one laptop per child, and to maintain order.  I fear that the lack of a translator has really been limiting the potential of my teaching abilities.  Lex has other things to worry about and doesn’t seem to take interest, his wife Renee is the more approachable of the two and I plan on working with her this weekend to come up with a better solution. 

Despite the challenges I’ve managed to form some great relationships with the students and the staff members.  Nurse Leah was a huge help getting me acquainted with everything, and she was kind enough to let me use her Natcom 3G internet stick to upload my last blog post.  Rennot is another person who has been a huge help.  He’s the go to guy for whatever needs to be done.  Need a whiteboard? Ask Rennot. Need to turn on the electricity? Ask Rennot. Need to buy your own 3G stick so you don’t have to continue to work in the clinic in order to get Leah to let you borrow hers? Ask Rennot.  His help has been huge, and even though we can’t always work out what the other person is saying, I am always happy to see him.   

Some of the kids have definitely been a big inspiration too.  With the class of younger kids most of them just want to play math games and take pictures.  But one kid in particular is too fascinated by the world around him to be caught up in that sort of mindless entertainment.  Dionson (pronounced Jenson) is a 13 year old boy whose bright mind and thirst for knowledge has truly amazed me.  All class he sits and reads the French Wikipedia pages.  He’s on a new topic every day and never stops asking questions.  Together we’ve explored sounds, light, the stars, the planets, force, and a few other aspects of the natural world.  After the second day of class he begged me to let him keep the laptop out a little longer.  I of course said yes and he went with me to the room where I charge the laptops.  A few minutes later one of his friends appeared and asked if he could use a laptop.  I told him he could only use one if he used it to read.  He agreed to my terms and booted up his own machine.  After about 30 minutes I had a group of 5 all laying on the carpet eagerly exploring Wikipedia.  Dionson is a brilliant young mind and I hope the other kids continue to follow in his footsteps. 

Aside from teaching I’ve spent my time at the beach house.  Every day a group of kids will come by looking to play a game of soccer, swim, or partake in a new fan favorite which I showed them, throwing around the Frisbee.  Most the kids are pretty talented with a soccer ball, but they still have a long way to go with a disc.  I will surely be leaving some of the Frisbees that I brought with me behind for the kids to enjoy.    

Overall Grand Goave has been a bit of a challenge.  It’s not easy to find helpful people, and it makes me appreciate the help I had in Port-au-Prince a lot more.  I will work things out with Renee this weekend and next week I have a bunch of lessons that I’m really excited about.  I’ll be exploring the concepts of gravity, pi, and I may even have another rocket lesson.  Should make for an eventful week

Hang on,

Sean

Final Week in Port-au-Prince

My last week in Port-au-Prince was definitely and eventful one.  On Tuesday I worked at Croix des Bouquets with Jeanide and Junior.  They helped me run through my music lesson again but with a new group of children.  The first class had 28 kids and only 7 XOs to share.  We made the best of it and the children seemed to have a great time breaking away from their normal lesson plans.  In Haiti much of the curriculum is built around learning by memorization.  The students’ knowledge is assessed using tests put forth by the schools.  Hands on learning is a strange concept for most teachers, but seeing the kids engaged and excited about learning is a wonderful way to change their minds.  After the music ended I gathered some data in order to reprogram the laptops later that week.

Thursday I was at Cazeau, which is an orphanage/church/school.  The orphanage is home to over 40 kids, I spent the afternoon with 25 of the school age kids.  I arrived at Cazeau via Taptap around 1:45.  I walked to the school and was greeted by shy smiles and curios eyes.  I sat down waiting for Dyna, and pulled out a toy I knew the kids would enjoy, a Rubik’s Cube.  The vibrant colors quickly drew a crowd of about 15 as a spun the rows and columns to show them how it works.  I passed it to my left and reached back into my bag of tricks.  I pulled out 3 juggling balls and showed off my circus training.  More kids crowded and I started giving free juggling lessons.  Most were baffled by the concept, but a few weren’t half bad.  Dyna arrived and it was time to start class, but the fun was far from over.  

The lesson plan for the day was a science experiment.  I wanted to introduce the scientific method to the kids in the form of a very basic experiment, so that they could understand the procedures involved.  I lined up four glass bottles at the front of the classroom.  Each bottle was filled with a different amount of water.  Bottle one was empty, bottle two was ¼ of the way filled, three was ½ filled, and four was ¾ of the way full.  The question I wanted them to investigate was, “which bottle will make the lowest pitch when I strike it with a pen?” In order to find this out, I walked the class through the 6 steps of the scientific method.  1) Ask a question 2) do research 3) form a hypothesis 4) do an experiment 5) record results 6) draw a conclusion.  For the research portion I explained sound is a wave, and I explained the correlation between wavelength and pitch. The kids then guessed which bottle they thought would have the lowest pitch.  The class was divided between 1 and 4.  We then did our experiment and got our answer.  Bottle 4 had the lowest pitch.  The children then were able to draw a conclusion, no matter how many bottles, the one with the lowest pitch will be the one with the most water.  The students wrote up their work on an app called Fototoon, their work is down below. 

Friday I spent planning for my second seminar at Delmas 28.  I promised the kids I’d be back a week later to talk about space and I couldn’t have been more excited.  I decided to do a rocket science lesson.  Definitely an ambitious idea, but one that I knew the kids would be excited about.  I went to the market the day before and picked up the necessary supplies. The most essential being: baking soda, vinegar, tape and cardboard.  The rockets were to be designed at the end of class after I went over a few basic things.  Mike, a friend from Communitere, was kind enough to help me build a launch pad and I was all set.

Saturday arrived and I was up early making sure everything was in order.  I set up the launch sight in the driveway at Communitere and launched some practice rockets.  After a few successful launches Jeanide arrived and we were off to Delmas 28. 

We got to the classroom and I recognized most of the faces from the week before.  A few new students piled in and we had a total of 27 eager minds.  I began the seminar by talking about gravity.  The juggling came in handy again as a way to capture attention, and also to model the effects of this invisible force.  After they grasped that concept, I went on to explain that if you have a great enough force applied to an object, you can escape the earth’s gravity.  I then showed some pictures from the Apollo missions to support my utterly unbelievable claims.  I explained to the kids that in order to make a good rocket, you need three things.  1) A strong force 2) An aerodynamic body 3) Balance.  I had them draw out the best designs they could on paint.  The kids do not have all that much experience with a touchpad mouse so some of the designs seemed not so structurally sound, but one kid in particular did a wonderful job.  His name is Matariro and I have no doubt he’s going places.

After the computer designs were complete, I split the kids up into two teams.  Each was given one water bottle and an equal amount of both cardboard and tape.  They had 45 minutes to construct their rockets and they immediately got working.  Each rocket seemed to have 5 or 6 hands on it at all times.  Some helping to secure wings, others working on the nozzle.  What at first seemed like chaos, ended up being a fairly efficient way of working, and with 15 minutes to spare both teams were done and eager to fire them off.  We lined up and climbed the stairs up to our launch site.

I set up the launch pad and explained to the kids that I would put an equal amount of vinegar and baking soda in each rocket.  I wrapped the baking soda in toilet paper to delay the reaction enough so that could attach the cork and build pressure.  First up was team one.  None of the kids really knew what to expect, but they were filled with anticipation as they saw me measuring out the rocket fuel.  I slid the wrapped baking soda into the vinegar mixture and secured the cork to the mouth of the bottle. All systems were a go.  As I stepped back to a safe distance I could feel that the pressure was on.  I had promised the kids that we would transform these household objects into a rocket and although I knew it was possible, I was still worried about the experiment not living up to the hype.  The pressure continued to build and so did the anticipation.  The rocket shot off into the air and flew a good 25-30 feet before touching down slightly off center from the landing sight.  Jeanide was kind enough to take a video which I have linked here.  The kids roared with excitement and I let out a hardy laugh followed by a big smile. Bringing that amount of joy to a group of kids through to power of science was one of the most rewarding and wonderful feelings I’ve ever had.  Their reaction says it all.  http://youtu.be/iZ7zWsX6mi0 

Group 2 was up and they were confident they could do better.  I loaded their rocket with fuel and secured it to the launch pad.  This video shows them arguing over who had the better of the two flights, I’ll let you the viewer decide.  http://youtu.be/ttQCFzPpxF0    

Class came to an end as we rounded up the scraps.  The kids continued their bickering down the steps and into the classroom.  We never did pick a winner but everyone enjoyed themselves and that was more than enough.  I said my goodbyes and handed out as many high fives as I could before Jeanide pulled me out of there.  We were off to our next school at Croix des Bouquets to reprogram the software on the XOs.

We arrived at the school to realize they had no power.  Jeanide and I met up with Junior and we took the laptops back to Jeanide’s house so we could have electricity.  We sat around talking as I updated the software two at a time.  Junior filled me in on the current political struggle and Jeanide cleaned up for the dinner we had planned.  Haiti’s former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide was back in town, and rumor has it Martelly’s people (the current president) were trying to arrest Aristide and charge him for crimes of corruption.  Whether the charges are legitimate or not is unclear but Aristide is no guiltier than Martelly or any of his predecessors.  Aristide was one of Haiti’s most beloved presidents, but ideologically he and Martelly couldn’t disagree more.  Hearing all of this gave me a much better idea of why so many helicopters had been flying over Communitere keeping me up at night.  I said goodbye to Junior and thanked him for the good talk. 

Jeanide and I met up with Fefe and Dyna at one of the fancier bars in Port-au-Prince (it had air conditioning). We had a lovely last meal together and I thanked them for all the help they’d given me in my 10 days with them.  They made the adjustment a lot easier and I can’t thank them enough. 

As of right now I’m writing from my second work destination.  It’s a school/church in Grand Goave called Mission of Hope.  I’ve been living with Pastor Lex and his wife Renee.  I’ve already taught a few days’ worth of classes but that will have to wait until the next post.  A big thanks for all of those who are supporting me through this.  I love the feedback you all have given me, and I’m always happy to talk.  Feel free to leave a comment, or send me and email, or reach out to me via social media.

     

Hang on,

Sean