A Little Light Reading

During my long, slow summer in Tennessee this year I spent lots of time reading books with cover art that usually involved high heels, bearing titles with cleverly altered classic rock lyrics, slightly nauseating puns or a combination of the two with a fashion designer’s name thrown in. Now I’m reading books with names like “Looking Inside the Classroom: Reflecting on the ‘how’ as well as the ‘what’ in effective reading and instruction,” and “Text Talk: Capturing the benefits of read-aloud experiences for young children.” I am disappointed to find that shockingly few of these works have anything to do with a juicy romance, an inspiring adventure or a wardrobe make-over and none of their covers are pink.

I’m reading these ultra-boring things in an attempt to devise a plan to improve the Language Arts program at the Soufriere Primary School. This, in even fewer words, has been my only job description for the next two years of my life. So, because I grew up with Jim Dyer as a dad, I just grabbed every single book I could find about reading and grammar and teaching and am desperately devouring them as if they were SAT prep books a week before the test. I have abandoned my vision of me (looking fabulous but not so fabulous as to scare people – certainly not sweating) gliding into a classroom full of happy, quiet children, sitting in a circle of bright and interested faces and singing the “Getting to Know You” song from The King and I. Closer to reality were my pre-Peace Corps fears of me (looking thrown-together at best – certainly sweating) stumbling into a raucous mess of screeching kids, begging the attention of distracted, apathetic faces and humming a funeral dirge. Real life falls somewhere in the middle but leans toward the latter.

On a happier note - only yesterday I was established as the CARE School (mentioned in an earlier post) Arts and Crafts Program Senior Coordinator (a title I made up and will definitely not tell anyone at the school about.) Now every Monday afternoon I will have craft hour with the 25 students at the school, starting with simple projects then working up to something they can sell at the national CARE School Craft Exhibition. It would be difficult to over-estimate how excited I am about getting started and have been furiously researching kids’ craft projects that can be done with little resources and recycled found objects (my specialty.) Any and all project suggestions are welcome, and thanks already to Robley Hood for the “Single Page Book” instructions, which I plan on using for our first session!

The Ant Trap

One Sunday morning in October I sat writing letters in the kitchen of my host mother’s house. I was waiting for an important phone call from the Peace Corps office about my future housing, so decided not to accompany Margaret Rose (host-mom) to mass. She was standing just a few feet away from me when a car horn honked and suddenly she shouted “COME, HALLIE. COME!” with such stern command that I wondered if she’d gotten a puppy, named it Hallie and forgotten to tell me about it. In confusion I just stood up and looked at her, waiting for a little clarification. She didn’t move and neither did I until she said “COME, HALLIE. PUT THE CAKE HERE!” and pointed to a set of bowls on the counter, a small one filled with water inside a larger, shallow one also holding water. I looked all around me and didn’t know where to come and didn’t see a cake but it was clear we were having an emergency, so I just calmly said “I’m sorry, Margaret Rose. I don’t know what’s going on.” At that she gave an exasperated huff and bolted out the door to the waiting car. I ran after her and was handed the mystery cake. Margaret Rose looked me square in the eye like she was about to tell me some seriously serious bad news, paused and said “Ants,” got in the car and rode away.

So here’s how the ant trap works – as with every morsel of unsecured food, the cake attracts the attention of all ants within a 12 mile radius. Because this is the Caribbean the ants would think of this distance in kilometers. The cake-hungry bugs crawl up the white bowl toward the prize and drown in the water. If the ants can swim (and some can) they make it to the second bowl but are usually pretty tuckered out and so cannot muster the strength to scale the cake-plate upside down. The few Lance Armstrong ants that do get to the cake are too exhausted to eat.