This is my last day in Jacmel.  Everything began as usual, and I have two more teachers to meet this morning and then a meeting in the afternoon.  I met with one of two female teachers.  

I have come to understand that what the teachers here mean by writing is entirely I service of grammar. They write by hand sentences that use the grammar being taught during the lesson.  When I tried to suggest that writing was more than just composing lesson based grammar sentences, the teacher did not understand what I was suggesting.  In their tradition, writing only means to compose grammatical sentences for learning English. Hm…. That’s a new problem, and one I need a TESOL teacher to help with teaching the teachers here. 

The other issue that has dominated my conversations is discipline and classroom management.  The problems these teachers face are the problems every teacher faces: students talking, incomplete homework, other forms of disruptive behavior, rude classroom interchanges between students and student to teacher.

It has taken me all week to begin to understand the system they have developed for their teaching, the individual styles and the problems or needs they have.  At first, Max, the principal, kept asking me to train the teachers to teach.  That can mean so many things that I did not know where to start.  I had developed the 7 lessons that I gave on videotapes, but at the time I only assumed that they had had no teacher training except what they would have had in school and in other language classes.  So, how to plan a lesson, varying activities and repeating concepts through different language arts activities was probably the place to begin.  I ended up giving much advice on how to discipline.  I noticed that the teachers allow students to sit wherever they want to in the class, and of course, students sit next to friends — sometimes.   I suggested that they move the troubling student to another location, use a seating chart and place students where the teacher wants them to sit, learn all the students’ names, have a discipline plan for classroom disruptive behavior and stick to it.

After I had met with the two remaining teachers, Max had a meeting of all the teachers, after a lunch of rice and beans.  Today though we had a treat.  The cook for the school children prepared a breadfruit.  I had never one and certainly never tasted one.  It looks like a large hedge apple and tastes like potato.  The flavor is mild and starchy. I didn’t like it. 

At the meeting, Max thanked us for coming, and then the teachers who wanted to stood and gave a kind of encomium.  Then, after they finished, the teachers wanted to hear from me. I wish I now had a recording of what I said because I can’t remember what it was.  Something to the effect that I am not finished with helping them.  BUT, I need help from TESOL and/or ESL teachers who would be willing to come to Haiti at their own expense and help these young men and women achieve a dream.  The need help with the basic teaching principles, and they need guidance with teaching each of the language arts with specific teaching methods that are unique to learning a different language. 

Yes, the living conditions are what we would consider primitive and uncomfortable, but the rewards are enormous and these teachers need our help to accomplish their goals and their mission of helping their own people.   Several of the teachers here also already speak Spanish, and they are looking to eventually add German and Portuguese. 

The teachers were awarded a certificate to recognize the training.  These certificates are extremely important to them because it is the economic/intellectual capital that they need to prove their competence with the language and to show that they have training from exerts outside Haiti.  To reciprocate this, the teachers from FLI awarded me a certificate that recognized the 6 days of training teachers for FLI.

Then, it was picture-taking time and farewell moments.  I took dozens of photos so eventually I would be able to build a presentation that I could show to interested teachers who would like to continue this work.

Back at the hotel, I packed, had dinner and tried to write and then sleep before my 4:00 am call for the ride back to Port-au-Prince. 

I am not home yet.  American Airlines has delayed the flight from PAP to Miami by another hour, and I am not sure I can now make my connection.  It will happen, and then the work begins again.