Meeting the children

After going to sleep at 10 pm we got a good nights’ rest. We woke up bright and early and started our day with a good breakfast. We walked to St. Mary’s Anglican School which is five minutes’ walk from where we are staying. The students start school every week by going to chapel where they sing songs and recite the Lord’s Prayer. After, they dismiss chapel to start their classes. The classrooms are very small and without air conditioning and lights while some are lucky enough to have fans. We each were assigned a classroom all in different grades. Their system of placement is in standards instead of grades (example: grade 3 = standard 1). Some of us were lucky enough to have experienced teachers while others had fairly new teachers with little experience in a classroom and little to no training. For these teachers placed in a school, it is similar to leaving high school and starting out as a first year teacher. They lack the experience that we as education majors gain through observation and instruction time. After school was let out we went shopping for supplies that we needed for our lesson that we will be teaching tomorrow. On the way back some of the girls saw a street vendor selling jewelry who also informed us about some of the history of Belize. Most of us have come to a realization of how lucky we are and how much we take for granted. As we ended the night by dividing the school supplies for the two schools, we realized what a blessing our friends, family and community have been. We have so many materials to share with the children and teachers—it is amazing!! As American future teachers, we have come to realize that if run out of materials for our classrooms we can easily go to Target or Wal-mart that night. In Belize that isn’t possible as the government controls even the teacher’s salary and that is all they provide for the schools. Everything else that the schools have or need must be donated or bought by the teachers. We all have a greater appreciation for how much our government values education!