Surviving the Storms

I just wanted to calm everyone’s fears about the current hurricanes. There have been three hurricanes in a row, but so far there has been nothing like the devastation along the coasts that last years’ hurricanes caused. The Northern beaches have been damaged in the DR, but most of the damage occurred in Haiti. My house in Jarabacoa is high and dry for the most part. The roof leaks (only in a few places) and we lose power when there is a storm, but we are quite safe. Jarabacoa is a mountainous town that is safely tucked into a valley near the highest peak in the Caribbean, which I will be climbing with my 10th and 11th graders in a few weeks. There is some flooding and the potential for damage from the coming hurricane Ike.
Doulos’s work with Reef Check to study coral reefs has also come to the attention of the Discovery Channel. Weather permitting, I will be traveling to the East coast with 7 students to run a small camp studying the reefs so that the Discovery Channel can film it. It is very exciting and I hope that everything works out. Prayers for the people along the coast that are more affected by the hurricane and for safe travels this week would be appreciated.

Serving as a boat captain??

The school year has started with an amazing and intense week of staff training. We have one week left of training, preparations, and meetings before over 200 students will descend upon the school on August 18th for the first day of classes. The staff has grown to contain 47 members from a variety of nations and backgrounds.

The first week of staff training was focused on experiential learning and how to implement it. The training was truly inspiring and very practical. We started out with a day of workshops where all staff (including maintenance and office staff) participated in a variety of activities where they played the role of a student while learning background knowledge about coral reefs and their importance to the Dominican Republic. We then traveled to the coast of the island and took a boat out to Catalina Island to snorkel above some of the DR’s most beautiful coral reefs. Several members of the staff had never seen real corals and had not realized the state of their islands reefs and their importance. After viewing the amazing reefs, we pilled back into the bus to visit a local fishing village. Reef Check (an international reef conservation agency) has been working for years to create the DR’s first underwater marine sanctuary. The sanctuary is long overdue and the islands reefs are dangerously damaged. The local fishing village has banded together and with the education and guidance of Reef Check has agreed to set aside a portion of their fishing area to protect the reefs and conserve fisheries for future generations. The staff spent several hours talking to the fishermen about the government involvement in the problems of over-fishing and their hopes for the marine sanctuary. Talking to individuals that were personally affected by the destruction of the reefs and thus the local fisheries made the entire learning experience come alive and the staff developed a new passion for coral reefs and for the power of expeditionary learning. To complete the learning experience, the staff has begun working on educational signs that will be placed in the local park to help protect it from additional damage by tourists. I will be working with the sixth grade again to make additional signs. Instead of a long and dry workshop on how to teach experiential learning, the staff participated in the process and was thus inspired. The experience also helped to bond the staff together and create new friendships as well as an unforgettable experience.

Check out my web album for more fun pictures of our adventurous staff training (I recommend the slide show option).

Back in the DR!

I have safely returned to Jarabacoa, Dominican Republic! I arrived late Monday evening and was warmly greeted by my downstairs neighbors at the airport and started work at Doulos at 8AM Tuesday morning. It was hard to leave my wonderful friends and family, but I was delighted to have the chance to come home and visit people. My apartment was dusty, but with no major mishaps after being empty for most of the summer. My other two roommates (the kindergarten teacher and the high school English teacher) have also safely returned and we are all glad to be settled into an apartment for the year. I am delighted to have a more manageable teaching load and hopefully have time to develop the high school science curriculum and spend more time getting to know my students outside of class. I will be teaching ninth grade Physical Science, tenth grade bible and biology (I taught this last year), eleventh grade chemistry, and a health class (for one semester). I am delighted to have been able to bring back a variety of donated science supplies. I will be sending out a supply list later this semester once I build the new curricula and determine what else I will need. I have been healthy all week and even had enough energy after a long week to hike up a river! Praise the Lord for good health—please pray that it continues. My other major prayer requests are for funding, wisdom and patience with my students and myself as I teach three new classes this year. I will also still be assisting our new middle school science teacher with the middle school expeditions that I developed and taught last year. My prayer requests are listed in the margin (scroll down) of this blog and will be updated throughout the year. I know that God is going to teach me many new things this year and I am thankful to be part of the ministry at Doulos for another year and be able to see how the students and staff grow in Him.

Learning to Serve

True to its name, Doulos (translated as slave of Christ) dedicated the last three days of school to service projects. One of the goals of the school is to cultivate a joyful servant heart in its students. If we are trying to help students become leaders in Christ, we need to teach them to serve like Christ first. I was initially apprehensive to spend three solid days with my rowdy 7th and 8th graders on a service project, but my excitement for an opportunity to serve the community with my students grew as the week approached. After a heated and boisterous debate, my crew of middle school students decided to visit the local school for students with disabilities. Our project for the week was to paint the playground wall white and then help the students in the school paint their hand print and name on the wall.
A brief snapshot of the experience:
After pilling into a local taxi, the fearless 7/8th grade crew was off serve! Armed and dangerous with scrub brushes, brooms, and an assortment of buckets we were ready for day 1: cleaning mold, moss, and other green growths from the playground wall. An excited bunch of students welcomed us at the gate and proceeded to give us a tour of the school. Our first morning was filled with complaints from some, joyful song from others, and a stream of humor from my class clowns. By mid-morning our wall was somewhat clean and we spent the rest of the time playing with the disabled students in the school. I challenged my students to focus on befriending one student with disabilities and learning to love and understand them as another person, not just a kid with disabilities. Bouncing balls in all directions (at times dangerously close to the clean and wet wall), jump ropes, gleeful giggles, and other thrown objects filled the air.



The first day was a bit rocky, but after much prayer, patience and explaining, my students were carefully and joyfully playing with students with a wide range of abilities by the last day. The playground wall is now complete with a colorful array of handprints and my students have learned a little more about what it means to serve. I was overjoyed to see some of my rowdiest and most impatient boys carefully teaching some of the younger children with disabilities how to throw a ball and hugging them when it was time to leave.

It has been a challenging year, but I can already see fruits from Doulos’s steady focus on service, leadership, and experiential learning, all to impact the Dominican Republic for Christ. I am blessed to already be able to see my students changing. They are growing in their faith as well as becoming more patient, loving, and kind. I myself am learning more about the same things from my students and from the community I live in.

Caving with 7th Graders???

My recent adventure with seventh grade was perhaps my greatest challenge and triumph of the year. I recovered from the amoeba and started gaining weight back, just in time to take my seventh graders caving. Teaching five different grades (6-10) does have its benefits; when one class is struggling, another class is usually doing well. Seventh grade has been my devotionals class and consistently my most troubled class; there are more students in danger of failing out of seventh grade than any other grade in the school, these students have the greatest behavior problems, and are the most exhausting for me to teach. I have grown to love them as individuals, but as a class they aren’t even nice to each other. In seventh grade science, we are currently in the midst of our expedition on caves. In the hopes of creating a bonding and challenging experience, I decided to take the seventh grade class on an adventurous caving trip. I hired the adventure leader from the local Young Life Camp (Laura) to guide us through the caves. We headed out from the school at 6:45AM and drove 3 hours to a relatively unknown and unexplored cave. Unfortunately, the caves on the island are in danger of destruction due to the massive amounts of mining for limestone. The mining actually prevented our van from driving up the mountainside. We were forced to pile out and hike up in the midday sun. A local police truck took pity on our straggling group and allowed us to pile into the back for a ride. The cave entrance was amazingly beautiful; complete with ancient Taino Indian Paintings, a wide-open chamber with sun pouring in from the roof, and moss covered walls. The descent into the cave was two 30-40 foot rappels. The open area of the cave was scattered with piles of limestone, bat bones, snake-skins, and fallen crystals. As we traveled deeper into the cave, we entered into a treasure chest of crystal formations, moon ponds, stalactites, stalagmites, exotic cave spiders, and small flying bats. I was just as excited and awed as my students and was delighted that they were finally looking after each other and making sure their partner didn’t fall down or get lost. I suppose necessity is the best teacher. The ascent was challenging and I ended up having to pull several students up the last bit of the climb. At the end of the day, we had all learned something about caves, ourselves, and what it means to overcome an obstacle or fear. Check out my web album for some awesome caving pictures!

Fighting Tropical Diseases

It has been a big month. One of my seventh graders returned to New York and several students in the grades I teach (6-10) are in danger of failing for the year. Please pray for my students that are struggling. I would miss them greatly if they couldn’t stay next year and would be heartbroken to know that they had lost, perhaps, their only opportunity to have a better education. My parents came to visit, I attended my first bilingual wedding (American Teacher at Doulos to a Dominican Man), and the neighboring town was hit by a tornado for the first time ever and is struggling to recover. Tin roofs do not do well in tornadoes and the poorest communities near the river were severely damaged. Did I mention that I moved again? Needless to say it has been a challenging month and a blessed month.

My biggest prayer request at the moment is for better health. I have encountered my first tropical amoeba and bacterial infection in my gut and have been struggling against it for the past week and a half. Both of my roommates and several other teachers have fallen ill with similar ailments. I am pretty sure that we all ate some suspicious lettuce at the wedding dinner. Stomach problems are so common here and most of it is due to dirty water. My roommates and I have been struggling to retain food and liquids in our bodies and have enough energy to teach. We have been fortunate to locate Gatorade in a variety of flavors and after a trip to the local clinic and pharmacy we are certainly on the mend. Medicine is unregulated and inconsistent here, but at least it is available. I was fortunate enough to get to know the mother of one of the students that plays soccer at our school, who happens to be an excellent pediatrician. Everything here is based on relationships. That means that things take longer many times……but it also means that once you have a relationship with a member of a family, then you know that you will be well taken care of. I sometimes wonder what has been lost in our super efficient and business-like North American Society. I like knowing that since I am on good terms with my landlord, his cousin’s, son’s friend is held accountable to fix my water pump! Please pray for protection for our school and this community against sickness.

Living without water.....a blessing in disguise?

I hope you are all well and blessed. I have moved once again (Lord willing for the last time!) to the second floor of a house close to the school. I am now living with two other teachers instead of just one. The new place is slightly bigger, cheaper, and has fairly consistent hot water. I have traded in my solid cement ceilings and broken water pipes for a slightly rickety tin roof that allows occasional bats and mice into the house. Both of the latest apartments do however have a remarkable view of the mountains and a fresh breeze. The latest mouse provided no end of stories for my students. They all wanted to come over and show us how to kill one. Time will tell if this move was a wise decision. Unfortunately, the water supply has become much more variable since our landlord moved out from underneath us to a quieter neighborhood across town (the endless crowing of the roosters and bachata music from the neighboring vegetable stands now seems like a natural background). Their moving has led to a series of water problems…….. I am grateful to be living in a house that has well water instead of city water. The city water supply is pumped directly out of the nearby river with no filtration whatsoever. I prefer not to think about all of the things that you can find in the river water. The pump that supplies our water tank is probably the oldest, rustiest piece of machinery that I have ever seen in my life. The first time we called the landlord to find the on/off switch we could not locate it since it was described as green. In the pump’s rusted state it looks more like a dull red piece of junk. It must be handled with great care and ghetto rigging. Unfortunately, the landlord was the only person that truly understood how to fix the pump, and we have been without water at least 2- days a week since his departure. The water supply is currently becoming more consistent. As far as local landlords go, our landlord is very contentious with a multitude of sons and employees that he has promptly sent to our rescue. I think they even started to recognize our phone number……….. In the past month, we have run out of gas for the stove, water, and periodically been without electricity. Water truly is vital to life. It is by far the most frustrating resource to live without. We have adapted and now keep more jugs of water around the house and in bins outside. Despite the annoyance of running out of water mid-shower, I have been truly blessed by the graciousness of my neighbors. Several of my students live in the surrounding houses and when one father saw me struggling to drag an extra bucket of water up the stairs he offered me his house. I enjoyed an afternoon of laundry and sweet tea across the street with two of my students and their mother. The next time we ran out of water I had just returned from a long run. Out of consideration for my roommates, I felt the need to find a way to shower. The school secretary that lives next door immediately offered me the shower in her house. If I was living in a wealthier country, or just in a wealthier area of town I might never have the opportunity to be so blessed by my neighbors. It is humbling to be so in need of life’s basic resources, but it has allowed for huge blessings and new friendships.