Wow! There is a lot to talk about since my last update 11 days ago! I have adapted to many of the nuances of the culture and teaching style here in Belize. I have gotten creative with my lesson planning in order to accommodate the lesser amount of resources than I am used to in Massachusetts. For example, I am teaching how to find volume this week and created varying sizes of cubes out of construction paper and tape to give the students a visual and tactile experience with cubic units. I brought down from Massachusetts a fair amount of school supplies when I came such as construction paper, pencils, pens, erasers, glue sticks, permanent markers, paper clips, tape, expo markers, etc. and they have all come in handy! I have not printed out one worksheet to complete with the students which is very different from Massachusetts. The students mainly either copy down notes or homework from the whiteboard or their textbooks. The students complete assessments based on what they are learning on paper or posters and hang them around the room to display. All of their work is decorated to look visually appealing and displayed then, taken down when the class moves to a new topic. My Fiancé will be visiting in a few weeks and she is bringing from the states more supplies as well as Christmas lights and blow up Christmas decorations for L.I.C.A.’s Christmas variety show that they are putting on December 8th.

This week, our whole school was preparing for cultural day which was last Friday, the 16th. Each class teamed up with another class to create an expo for their specified cultural group to represent the 5 major cultural groups of Belize. Our class and the standard 3 class were responsible for putting on an expo to display the Mayan culture. We prepared the students all week by teaching them each facet of the Mayan culture so that they would be prepared to present during the expo. Also, I orchestrated a performance of the students acting out a human sacrifice during the expo that mimicked a scene from the movie, “Apocalypto” The students who were in the performance stayed after school to practice almost every day of the week to prepare for the act. We dressed them in traditional attire and painted the students’ face and bodies also tying coconut leaves around their waist to make them look like ancient Mayan people. I also created many posters for the students to present during the expo of the various Mayan ruins as well as language, calendar, food and drink, traditional dance as well as the number system and alphabet. We also made traditional Mayan food called “escabeche” which is a chicken and onion soup served with soft corn tortilla shells. This food was sold at our expo to fundraise for the class and resulted in altogether making 330 dollars for the class! This day took a lot of preparation and effort but the students had a lot of fun and the parents and guests were very impressed with the entire event. During this week, I also gained some carpentry experience after school by teaming up with another teacher to build a wooden bike rack for the school. This was valuable to the facility and myself because I am not a handy person and could use some experience with these types of projects and the school desperately needs a bike rack! There are long hours here at L.I.C.A. For everyone; I get into school around 7:30am and usually do not leave until 5:30- 6pm either helping students with schoolwork or doing other extracurricular endeavors. There is a lot of value  that is coming from my effort for the entirety of the school and the students at L.I.C.A. which makes the long hours worthwhile.

I have kept in steady contact with my former supervising practitioner in Massachusetts throughout my international student teaching experience. I had brought letters and decorated folders that my former students made from Massachusetts to my current students in Belize. In response, my new students completed letters and folders for me to send back to Massachusetts and were sent to the states on Thursday of last week. Each class was so curious of what the other class and individual students were like that I set up a FaceTime video chat between classes this past week. I set up a chat for the students to meet each other as a class and also individually meet their specific pen-pals! I went around to each student and had them meet and greet the student that they received and will be sending letters back and forth to. The principal and multiple teachers were there to witness the event and it was an engaging and culturally valuable thing to do for both sets of students. L.I.C.A. had done pen-pals before but never had done anything like that with a video chat before.

This past weekend, the other student teachers from San Pedro (Jen, Paige, Maya) and I took advantage of the long weekend and went on an all day trip to the mainland on Saturday. I took the water taxi to San Pedro on Friday night and then we woke up and started our journey into the mainland. Our first stop was at the ancient Mayan ruins of Altun Ha which were humbling and breath taking. Your mind cannot help to think about what the monolithic structures and plazas looked and felt like in ancient times at their pinnacle. We then took a drive through the rainforests, had some lunch and arrived at our next stop which was ziplining and cave tubing. Jen, Paige, Maya and I zipped over the rainforest and the vegetation and animals were very captivating. To witness the contrast of wildlife in the Belizean rainforest compared to Massachusetts was definitely a sight to behold. Possibly my favorite spot of the day is when we trekked 30 minutes into the rainforest to arrive at a large cave entrance. This was a gigantic limestone cave system that was carved out by the water of the Maya Mountains. We floated down the river and soaked up the beauty of the caves and our guide provided us with great information throughout the trip. At one point, the guide had us turn off our lights to experience total darkness and to have us appreciate why the ancient Mayans thought of these caves as the entrance to the underworld. I have been doing a lot for the school and the students but have also taken the opportunity to enjoy the sights and experiences of Belize.