A Change in My Schedule

I have heard that in the Peace Corps, an individual can live within a community for two years, but it is only in the second year that the individual will get anything concrete started because the first year is just spent getting to know the customs, the language and getting used to the whole idea of not being in an industrialized area of the world. I have felt like it has been my first year in the Peace Corps but it has only been one month since I arrived. I thought I would be teaching math and English to Thai children everyday. To my amazement, nothing like this has really happened, and it probably will not happen. After using the first month to learn all the children’s names and a little Thai (one or two word phrases is all I know), I have found my little niche where I can be useful in the school. Upon my arrival at the school, I found the children were, to put it mildly, lacking in the area of discipline. I do not believe the saying “that it is easy to teach a child because all they want to do is learn” because if the child has no discipline then you might as well teach the wall. I saw this as a problem and I knew that I could help get the children to become more focused on their studying rather than on seeing how loud they could cry, yell or roll around on the ground during class time. I feel as though I have some expertise in the disciplinary actions that need to be taken with children to get them focused, not to say anything bad about my little brother, but I felt that by having to be the “mean big brother” sometimes, I was able to help him become a better person in the long run. With good consistent disciplinary actions and the help of the teacher who created a “Good Boy and Good Girl of the Week” award that includes a candy treat to the winner; the children went from a level 3 behavior to a level 7 behavior (10 being very good behavior) in only one week. No matter how many times I had to remove a child from the classroom because of bad behavior or crying (removing the child, I learned from another school, is good Montessori practice) or for some children, having to wait three days until they were able to but a Starfish stick into their half cut milk carton at the end of the day (positive reward system), creating good behavior and focus is possible. Though it may seem that I have turned into the Starfish drill sergeant; the children still like me, but with a better understanding of when it is time to work and when it is time to play.
Other than working with behavioral problems, I have also been one of the playground engineers working with Lawson. Together we have managed to put up a swing in one day and we are going back to the drawing boards to design more playground equipment that we can build. For anyone who might be building a playground in the area that they live in, keep in mind that the playground does not need to be made only from metal, plastic or wood because bamboo and rope work just fine. The swing that we made was made by lashing four pieces of bamboo measured at 15 feet (we use American units when building, but 15 feet is 4.5 meters) and the seat was made with two other smaller bamboo pieces and thick rope (the swing part can be made with your own imagination). I am also the creator and painter of new Montessori teaching tools. I have been painting with oil base paint, but I have convinced people that I should be using water base (Latex) because it does not have all the harmful chemicals that go into painting the wood and cleaning the brushes. I have more painting to finish, but I have plans next week to begin to design and make eight wooden boxes that will be used to hold math materials. I hope to get the children more involved in helping me make the boxes because I have seen that some children are amazing at building out of Legos, so wood might be the next step up for these children. I will continue to find areas that I am needed and report back on my accomplishments. I remind myself that sometimes you have to go out and look for work because it will not always come to you.