Blog Post 2: First Days at Alpha

We’ve finally started working at Alpha Primary School and I can’t help but fall in love with every student that I meet. We received such a warm welcome from the school when we arrived on Monday and all of the kids can’t help but play with our hair, touch our skin, and ask us questions about who we are and where we come from. They are all so respectful to us and adults in general as well, rarely talking back if ever and always addressing us by Miss which is really refreshing. It’s been interesting because they have testing all this week so in the class we just get to see their revision time and then the administration of the bi-monthly reading and math tests that they take. I am in the 3A classroom which is a bit smaller than the typical class here at Alpha (only 32 students) because they are the ones that are struggling with reading. It’s amazing to me how many students you can cram into a small little un-air conditioned room and still be able to keep their attention and their focus. Since the sixth graders had a big examination to take on Tuesday, they need the extra bench space so the upper grades didn’t have school then which included my third graders. I was a little bummed but it gave me the opportunity to get to see how the first grade classes are run. This day was pretty chaotic because a lot of the teachers were gone for a funeral. We quickly realized that while in America a lot of the fighting that happens in schools is verbal, here in Jamaica they are a lot more physical with each other and I can’t tell you how many times I had to break up some students from tackling and wrestling each other which was new to me. This day also showed me the importance of how having your regular teacher in the classroom because of how thrown off everyone was. But despite all the chaos I can’t help but still be amazed by how incredibly smart all these students are. There are first graders who can spell, write, and read beautifully when back in the states my first graders can barely read on their own. And they’re learning at such advanced rates even in the conditions they have such as large class sizes, lack of technology, small classrooms, and lack of resources in general.