I haven't forgotten about the blog, but there hasn't been much of note and I'm determined not to fill this site with rambling day-by-day stuff. That being said, I'll tell you some rambling week-by-week stuff! We just finished midyear exams at the school. My kids (I always call them "my kids" which makes the other teachers laugh, but for some reason it comes out of my mouth more naturally that "my students"; I think because I'm still getting used to the idea that I'm a teacher), did fairly well. Not stellar (well a few did stellar), but because of the way it's all set up, their midyear mark just determines if they can sit the final and has no role whatsoever in their actual final mark.
So with that in mind, they all scored high enough to sit the final if they choose to, and we've still got two more terms to prepare for that. Essay writing was the hardest for most of them, which is no surprise considering English is a second language. I remember French being tough, and I don't think I had to write a bunch of essays on historical topics in my grade 10 and 11 French exams. The most frustrating part is that it's really cultural in Tonga to "save face," and avoid being embarrassed. As a result, I have to work extra hard to get the kids to come forward with questions, because they'd rather not know that risk being embarrassed showing that they don't know.
Canada Day is next week (I'll beat you all to it by 18 hours!), and I've prepared a "lecture" (no note taking required) for my students. The Simpsons joke, "It took the children 40 minutes to locate Canada on the map" is probably an all too frightening reality in my classroom. As previously mentioned, people assume if I'm not from the United States and I say I'm from further north, I must be Norwegian. My "not boring parts of Canadian history" Canada Day class includes French explorers who thought they had discovered China, or at least thought a great lake was the Pacific ocean, the war of 1812, and the Summit Series. I mention hockey enough in class that I thought it would be fun to throw that in, especially for the class where we're studying the Cold War. Keeping in mind that I have just 45min, I decided to forgo a lot of other certainly not boring highlights like Vimy Ridge and Juno beach and focus on some more "fun" events. Remembering my favourite Heritage Minutes helped a lot! So if you do nothing else on Canada Day, be sure to take comfort in the fact that I taught a bunch of island kids, who seemingly never heard of Canada before I showed up at their school, my own skewed and glossed over version of our history!
Showing posts with label teaching. Show all posts
Showing posts with label teaching. Show all posts
24 June 2008
18 March 2008
A Bit About my Job
I teach senior-level high school here in Tonga, and a school called ‘Api Fo’ou College. It’s one of the largest schools in the kingdom, with over 1000 students and about sixty staff. I work for an hour and a half to three hours a day Monday to Friday (every day I have two classes, three days a week I have four). I also get a grand total of fourteen paid weeks off a year (that's "paid" for me) so it’s pretty sweet. We call it “faka Tonga” which means “the Tongan way” (a.k.a. in Canada as not working very hard).
In Form 5 History the subjects I teach are (or will have taught, by November) International Co-operation (the League, UN, and Commonwealth), Unification and Resolution to Conflict (China and Palestine/Israel), and International Relations (Tonga since 1946 and World War II). I'm not sure if I teach World War II as an example of international relations breaking down, or of relationship building to fight other nations, but anyways. Form 6 History is Origins of WWI, Origins of WWII, and the Cold War. Then I teach Form 7 History – the Pacific, and Form 7 Sociology. Form 5 to 7 is equivalent to grades 11-13.
The school begins at Form 1, and when I see students in town who are not my own, particularly younger kids, I am often mistaken for Quintus. Quintus is the other Canadian who teaches at ‘Api Fo’ou. Quintus is also African-Canadian. But, it seems, all us Canadians look alike and it’s hard to tell us apart!
Typically my students are great, particularly forms 6 and 7, with only form 5 giving me occasional cause to take some kind of action. Last week I had one of those days, but it was much more fun than usual. I had one student who joined the class a day before a test (students are still appearing, even weeks after school has started). I told him to come attempt the test next class in order to see what he’d been missing. I could already tell from day one he was some sort of troublemaker. He came the next day, and chose to fill in the test with joke answers. I marked it correct or incorrect as I felt, and added my own joke corrections to his ridiculous answers. I would later find out that he was not a new addition to the class at all, but instead was skipping a different class where he did not finish an assignment that was due. Evidently he enjoyed the joke so much that he chose to attend my class three days in a row (the day before, of, and after the test in order to get his "mark.") Foolishly, though, he wrote his real name and homeroom on the attendance sheet and was discovered "out of place" by the office staff. Still, I had a lot of fun while he was with us.
For example, he included “Iran” to his answers for the permanent members of the League of Nations Council. So I crossed out his only correct answer (Britain) and replaced it with “North Korea.”
To the question “which League country withdrew from the Council in 1933?” He answered, “John Edwards.” I marked it wrong, and wrote, “John withdrew in 1937, and the correct answer was Barack Obama.”
For the question, “What did the Abyssinian crisis prove to Hitler about the League?” He answered, “Hitler is not a man he is a monsters and is actually evil.” I added, “You forgot that Hitler sold his soul in 1929.”
Finally for the question, “name a problem you think weakened the League, and provide a historical example,” he wrote, “All people just want their freedom. Black people in Fiji are oppressed by Australia and they want freedom from the white people” (he may have thought I’m Australian, most Tongans assume this if not American). I added, “We are all oppressed by Purple people. And with your freedom, where would you get corned beef?” An aside: Pacific countries that once practiced cannibalism now eat mass quantities of Australian corned beef. An eerie coincidence...just what exactly does corned beef taste like? At the bottom of the test I wrote, “A very intelligent effort for only one day of class! You will A+ the exam!"
In Form 5 History the subjects I teach are (or will have taught, by November) International Co-operation (the League, UN, and Commonwealth), Unification and Resolution to Conflict (China and Palestine/Israel), and International Relations (Tonga since 1946 and World War II). I'm not sure if I teach World War II as an example of international relations breaking down, or of relationship building to fight other nations, but anyways. Form 6 History is Origins of WWI, Origins of WWII, and the Cold War. Then I teach Form 7 History – the Pacific, and Form 7 Sociology. Form 5 to 7 is equivalent to grades 11-13.
The school begins at Form 1, and when I see students in town who are not my own, particularly younger kids, I am often mistaken for Quintus. Quintus is the other Canadian who teaches at ‘Api Fo’ou. Quintus is also African-Canadian. But, it seems, all us Canadians look alike and it’s hard to tell us apart!
Typically my students are great, particularly forms 6 and 7, with only form 5 giving me occasional cause to take some kind of action. Last week I had one of those days, but it was much more fun than usual. I had one student who joined the class a day before a test (students are still appearing, even weeks after school has started). I told him to come attempt the test next class in order to see what he’d been missing. I could already tell from day one he was some sort of troublemaker. He came the next day, and chose to fill in the test with joke answers. I marked it correct or incorrect as I felt, and added my own joke corrections to his ridiculous answers. I would later find out that he was not a new addition to the class at all, but instead was skipping a different class where he did not finish an assignment that was due. Evidently he enjoyed the joke so much that he chose to attend my class three days in a row (the day before, of, and after the test in order to get his "mark.") Foolishly, though, he wrote his real name and homeroom on the attendance sheet and was discovered "out of place" by the office staff. Still, I had a lot of fun while he was with us.
For example, he included “Iran” to his answers for the permanent members of the League of Nations Council. So I crossed out his only correct answer (Britain) and replaced it with “North Korea.”
To the question “which League country withdrew from the Council in 1933?” He answered, “John Edwards.” I marked it wrong, and wrote, “John withdrew in 1937, and the correct answer was Barack Obama.”
For the question, “What did the Abyssinian crisis prove to Hitler about the League?” He answered, “Hitler is not a man he is a monsters and is actually evil.” I added, “You forgot that Hitler sold his soul in 1929.”
Finally for the question, “name a problem you think weakened the League, and provide a historical example,” he wrote, “All people just want their freedom. Black people in Fiji are oppressed by Australia and they want freedom from the white people” (he may have thought I’m Australian, most Tongans assume this if not American). I added, “We are all oppressed by Purple people. And with your freedom, where would you get corned beef?” An aside: Pacific countries that once practiced cannibalism now eat mass quantities of Australian corned beef. An eerie coincidence...just what exactly does corned beef taste like? At the bottom of the test I wrote, “A very intelligent effort for only one day of class! You will A+ the exam!"
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