10 Maroon Rocks the Boat

So, it has been a long school year in the best of ways. I wanted to share some significant pieces of my school year since it is where I spend most of my time and energy here in Chuuk. My experiences with 10 Maroon range from life threatening to feelings of pure, motherly love. This is all rooted in my open ignorance asa first year teacher. Saramen Chuuk Academy graciously placed me with an infamous group of 35 10th graders who would ultimately adjust the state of my mental health. At the beginning of the school year I naively revealed to the students beyond a reasonable doubt that I was a push over who knows less about English Skills than polar bear does about coconuts. Further, many of them have nieces or nephews who are older than me, so we established early on that instability was inevitable. During our second home room, I decided to translate chaos as self-conscious excitement (thanks to Christian summer camp) and I told the home room that we needed a cheer to give us some identity and unity. After most of the students lost interest and others couldn’t come up with any ideas for the cheer they invited me to share my ideas. Heat exhausted and culture shocked, I stood up in front of 35 falsely wise students and did an old cheer from high school. It inadvertently became a metaphor for the 10 Maroon class behavior and my socio-political stance in Micronesia: “I slide, I glide, I get on the donkey ride, I want you, and you to rock the boat too. HIT IT- Rock the boat, don’t tip it over...shake it all up, shake it all up.” Don’t worry, the cheer involves corresponding dance moves. After explaining what a donkey was the student were authentically interested in learning and owning the cheer. Thank God, if not they would have chased me up a coconut where I would remain the rest of the year reflecting on high school students inability to see gray instead of black and white. Our cheer became known through out the school and fit 10 Maroon’s persona too well. The weeks passed by and at the end of the second quarter all of the teachers who taught 10 Maroon had a meeting to discuss their behavior. Each teacher had a different ways of dealing with the students; Julia the older math teacher was related to most of the students, so she had automatic respect from them and held down the class room with a militant tinge. Lincoln, a fellow JV, taught literature with a free spirit and pushed forward even though the culture is not familiar with Montessori education. I would normally just stare at the students until they would be quiet unless I had just popped a narcolepsy pill. Then I would lecture them on Paulo Fierre and the importance of education for liberation. In the end, I would say that Fumina, a Japanese volunteer, found the best approach. Fumina taught the ungrateful students biology in her second language and often worked hard on fruitless aspects of teaching. After a long day of asking the 10 Maroon students to be quiet, sit in their seats, and stop throwing paper Fumina snapped. She picked up her bag and left the class room yelling at the students, “FUCK YOU 10 MAROON” in her full flown Japanese accent with both of her hands up in the air signing the appropriate gesture of hate to the absolutely shocked students. This would be an especially shocking approach in the U.S., but don’t allow ethnocentricism to get the best of you. The situation was surprisingly mild for a Chuuk high school class room.
We all had our failures with class room management. One day during the last period I had 10 Maroon fiercely working on modifiers (misplaced participle phrases) in groups. After walking around the room to check in on their progress, I sat down at my desk to mark a few papers. I looked down for 30 seconds and when I raised my head there was a 4 foot high fire blazing in the back of the classroom. Two of my moderately behaved students, Andrea and Brian, were standing over the fire with ownership. They had decided to dispose of a pile of trash in the back of the room by lighting it on fire. All of the other students in the class continue to apathetically work on their group assignment as the fire burned. I was in so much shock that my only reaction was to stare at Andrea speechless. We locked eyes and as she sensed my anger she casually grabbed a large dictionary in arms reach and dropped it on the fire, extinguishing it with ease. Andrea and Brian sat back down in their groups to finish their grammar exercise and taking a cue from the students, I continued to teach as though nothing had happened. I never punished the fire starters since it seemed as though their intentions were not to burn down the school or even draw attention to themselves, just to get rid of the pile of trash Chuukese style. I did ask them to make sure they stay on task, so lighting a fire in the class room was equated to drawing a sketch of a cartoon character in a notebook, or whispering to a friend during class instead of working. A week later one of my students brought a large mud crab to class that was climbing all over the place as the students sat listening to my lecture. This was a non-issue since there were animals in the class room all of the time- dogs, rats, frogs, cats with no tails, and lizards. Then, one of the students pointed out that the crab was foaming at the mouth. This was my chance to be assertive. Rabid crabs-not in my class room! I ordered the dismissal of the crab despite some of the students objections and one of the boys stood up and violently stopped on top of the crazed crab, and threw it in the garbage. I nodded with approval to the closing of the lid of the trash and I told myself that 10 Maroon wasn’t going to rock the boat today. Recently I discovered that crabs can’t carry rabies and there aren’t any rabies in the islands.
In the end, if anyone tries to give 10 Maroon a bad label I will step up to bat for them attempting to cite any positive sides of the class. We belong to each other in our obvious failures and our attempts to connect to the world. Besides, I like to rock the boat.