Third Day of Teaching
“The whole object of travel is not to set
foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot in one’s own country as a
foreign land” -G. K. Chesterton
Teaching experiences in the states and in Belize are vastly different.
The curriculum in the United States is often strict and straight forward not
leaving much room for freedom in lesson planning from classroom to classroom,
while the curriculum here in Belize seems more flexible and adaptable for the
students in the classroom. That
flexibility allows for breaks during the day and use of the local environment
to teach outdoors.
Teaching in Belize has been a wonderful
experience allowing us to fall in love with teaching all over again. We were
able to come up with creative, hands on activities to teach my lessons. We
could easily move lessons outside when students became restless. This flexibility allowed the students to
become more engaged with the lesson and successfully learn the skills being
taught. The concrete floors allowed us to draw with chalk not only on the
chalkboard but on the floor as well. The different teaching strategies that we used
encouraged students to be involved and made them more eager to learn. These
teaching styles also gave the opportunity and time to focus on certain specific
skills for struggling students. The
schedule in our classrooms were easily modified to add more time to subjects
that needed additional practice. The Belize curriculum allows for repetition
until mastery, instead of moving on and scaffolding before students have a
chance to master the material.
One cultural norm that we have used here
in Belize that we would like to incorporate in classrooms back home, are the
real-life applications to each concept we taught. Students can easily make
connections between real-life and educational topics because they all seem to
come from the same background and culture. This can sometimes be a struggle in
the United States because our classrooms are so diverse and filled with
students who all come from multiple backgrounds making it hard to connect to
each and every one during a single lesson. When we return to our classroom in
the US, we will strive to incorporate a variety of real-life connections to our
lessons in order to connect with each of our students. This is one of the many
reasons why it is so crucial to know each of your students individually as well
as their community.
This has truly been an
eye-opening experience that has taught us so much and we could not be more
thankful and excited to put our new skills to use!
By:
Monica & Morgan E.
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