Day 31- Recap of week 4

So I have quite a bit of catching up to do.  

This past week, we have been back to work in the schools. On Monday, I was at New Horizons for the first time. I taught two classes of about 40 kids each. Once again, there is no gym or open area to have PE at the school, so I take the kids up the street to a soccer field. The field is mostly dusty dirt with a few patches of grass, and is completely littered with trash. Beer bottles, metal rods, broken glass, cement bricks, and much more can be found scattered around the field. And there is usually an audience of 3 to 4 sketchy guys sitting in the concession stand doing who knows what. The classes are an hour long and the only equipment I have is what the students bring from home. My first class, Standard V (6^th grade), only brought a flat basketball, so we played kickball. They had never played kickball before. It took them a minute to catch on, but I think they were enjoying it by the end. With my second class, Standard III, we started with some stretches, played a tag game as a class, and then I let the students split up and play soccer, volleyball, or jump rope. The students brought a soccer ball and a volleyball, and I brought the jump rope (I braided my clothes line to make a long rope). There were simply too many students to try and do anything else as a class. I ended up working with the students who wanted to play volleyball, and I taught them the correct form of the bump pass. I went over how to hold your hands and how to pass off of your forearms. Then I had the students get in a line and take turns passing to me.  

Me leading stretches

Tag Game

Tuesday morning I was at New Horizons again. I taught three classes. The first class I did basically the same thing that I did with the Standard III class the day before. Stretches, a tag game, and then I let them choose to play soccer or jump rope. My second class brought a wood baseball bat and some tennis balls, as well as a soccer ball. With that class, after stretches, the students could choose to play soccer or baseball.  I had the students who wanted to play baseball scatter around in the field and then come up, one at a time, and hit soft toss. None of the students knew how to hit. As each student came up, I had to give them a quick run down of how to hold the bat, how to stand, and how to swing. Some students caught on right away, but others   struggled. However, I did manage to get every kid to hit at least one or two balls. Everyone loved it! When it was time to go, they didn’t want to leave and everyone wanted to hit again. The next class brought the bat out too (there was a sibling of the girl who brought the bat in the class), so I did the same thing with them. Once again, it was a huge success. 

Boys playing soccer

Jump Rope

In the afternoon, I was at Isla Bonita. I took the Standard II class out to the beach. First, we played a group tag game. Then I went over how to shoot a basketball and let each student take two shoots. I could tell many of them weren’t interested in learning how to shoot so I finally gave up and let them either jump rope or play basketball. I find it important to note that all of the girls went to jump rope and all of the boys played basketball. 

Wednesday morning I observed one of the high school’s PE classes. It was very interesting to say the least. Many of the kids didn’t wear shoes and there were tables and other objects around the gym that the kids could easily bump into and get hurt. However, overall it was a pretty good class for the circumstances. Mr. Kelly had them do some warm up stretches and sprints, and then they played a game that combined soccer and basketball. There was definitely room for improvement in Mr. Kelly’s lesson, but I did see a lot of good things happening. 

Wednesday afternoon, I was at Isla Bonita for two classes. I borrowed a king sized bed sheet from Pedro’s, brought some tennis balls and some balled up socks, and did parachute activities with the Infant I (Kindergarten) class. Since I didn’t need a lot of space, I was able to have class on the playground instead of walking all the way out to the beach. It was a bit of a struggle to get the students to work as a team to get the parachute to work at first, but eventually we made it happen. The students had a blast. Then I had to teach Standard I and Standard III together. The classes came out 20 minutes late, leaving me with not enough time to take them out to the beach, so we played soccer steal the bacon on the playground. Steal the bacon is not an appropriate game to play in PE back home and I hated to do it, but I had to think of something on the spot that I could do in the space provided with one ball and about 30 kids. Honestly, it didn’t go so well. 




Thursday I taught one class at Isla Bonita. I did parachute again with Infant II. It was the hottest day of the week and I almost passed out, but the kids still had a lot of fun. 

The girl I am helping did not understand English very well so
 I had to hold on to her hands so that she could see what to do. 

I tried to play all of the games that I do with the parachute back in the states, but I had
 to make some adjustments because the bed sheet is so much smaller than an actual parachute.

Friday I was at the high school all day. I observed two of the new PE teacher’s Life Skills classes and one PE class. It was interesting to say the least. The new PE teacher’s name is Mr. Rodriguez. He is a super nice guy and I enjoyed hanging out with him all day. He is only one year older than me and he came from a middle grades math teaching job on the mainland of Belize. He told me that he got the job as PE teacher because he has an associate's degree in education and is a basketball player with some coaching experience. The topic in Life Skills was “Responsibilities of a Parent.” We don’t cover that kind of thing back in the states so I really enjoyed observing those classes. Mr. Rodriguez did very well in the classroom. His PE class was a completely different story. It was complete chaos. I actually ended up stepping in and getting the kids out onto the court and leading the warm up because Mr. Rodriguez didn’t have a plan or even a whistle. After my warm up, he made them run some and then he basically rolled out a basketball and a soccer ball and said play. The boys all played soccer and the girls sat down in the bleachers. I ended up prying the girls off of the bleachers and teaching them how to shoot a basketball. They were pretty uninterested at first, but once a few of them started making shots they kind of got into it. 

What a crazy week! It is so, so, so, so different than what I am use to back home. There is a serious lack of behavior management here and safety is not high on the priority list. These two things alone make things extremely difficult for me. And the students at the primary schools don’t think of PE as a class. They see it as recess or free play and they only want to do one of two things: soccer or nothing. Also, the lack of facilities and equipment has been tough to work through. And I have to mention the weather. It has been blistering hot this week and when I am at the primary schools, there is no shade so I melt in the sun. I am literally soaking wet with sweat when I come home. Oh how I miss my air-conditioned gym back home! However, I’ve learned a lot this week and I’ve got some better ideas for activities to do next week.