My First Week as a Principal

July 30, 2011

Some Memorable Events as a Beginning Principal

Every day at work has been interesting so far, trying to figure it all out and get ready for a new school year. I work with equipment that sort-of works and people whose first language is not English, so they don’t always understand how we want the task done. The last two days have been particularly interesting, the first from a cultural sense, and the second because today was the day our teachers arrived.

Yesterday Kathy and I attended a ceremony for newly certified teachers for the Marshall Islands. I sat through an hour and a half of a meeting and understood “komol ta ta,” which means thank you very much, and ”commissioner.” Since I know I stick out like a sore thumb I did my best to look attentive and interested. At the conclusion, we realized we were sitting through a completely different meeting and the ceremony we had come for was yet to begin! The ceremony came next and each principal for every school in the Marshall Islands was called up to receive an envelope with the new teaching certificates. Thankfully, this ceremony was mostly in English. I now possess a beautiful certificate that says I am certified to teach in the Marshall Islands!

While I didn’t understand but two words for the initial meeting, there were some interesting things I observed. The meeting was held on a large covered patio at the Marshall Islands High School. We sat in the plastic chairs many of us own for our patios. On the back of most of the chairs was written someone’s name in Sharpie. It turns out that if you graduate from the high school your family can donate a chair and put your name and class year on it. Men sat on one side and women on the other. Men were all in long pants and collared shirts; women in skirts or “Guam dresses.” You could hear a pin drop; no one had side conversations. Folks did feel free to get up and move around and take-out style chicken and rice along with bottled water was offered to everyone on the house. The man who ran the meeting struck me as looking like a Marshallese gangster. He sat at the front table wearing dark sunglasses and gesturing while he spoke into the mike. He never stood but sat and addressed the audience. It turns out the meeting was addressing the concerns about new certification rules for teachers; they now need a 2.5 g.p.a. and two years of education past high school to teach in the public school.

Today was a whole new adventure. Kathy and I were at the airport at 8:30 a.m. to pick up the new teachers. Of course all ten arrived with their two huge suitcases and two carry-ons, just as we did two weeks ago. The difference was, there were ten of them for two cars. Kathy had tried to plan ahead and had also arranged a van but there still wasn’t enough room. She had to flag down a couple of folks she knew that also happened to be at the airport and have them help haul luggage. We had people and luggage crammed into our cars, the likes I have never seen, maybe because in the U.S. there are seatbelt laws and such. But this trip was extra special because of the cars. “Junker” is almost too kind a label for these vehicles. The AC doesn’t work and the windows don’t roll down. Some of the doors don’t work either and lately the car I have borrowed doesn’t want to start a good part of the time. What a welcome to Majuro! We dropped them off, let them settle and then took them to buy water ($5/gallon gets it delivered) and groceries. Meanwhile we discovered one of the refrigerators wasn’t working so Kathy had to run to replace it. We loaded the cars with folks sitting on laps and groceries in the trunks and headed back. At this point it is about noon. The rest of the day was more of the same but we got them settled in. They are all very interesting people from all over the U.S. and Canada. They are mostly young and way more adventurous than I could dream of being. Some have worked in remote villages in Canada and Alaska where the groceries are ordered and delivered by the postal service and where there is no available water in the homes. One young woman worked as a World Teach volunteer on the opposite end of Majuro last year and lived with a host family. She ate ramen in the morning and white rice and tuna at 9 p.m. at night. That was it for a year. She really never wants to see white rice again but she is back because she loves the work and the people here.

I was relieved to get home around 6:30 in time for a swim. Our neighbor who works for the water company joined us and had some amazing stories of his own. They are a blog for another day. I was refreshed and happy to be home. We hung out a little and then went a mile down the road where a local has built an outdoor bar. Willard is acquainting himself with the neighbors and we are trying to support them a little so we drove down and had a beer at his place. We were hoping for live music but they didn’t get it together as hoped. We’ll try again another weekend.

Tomorrow we are going to try to attend the local church and see how that goes and then off to a birthday party. We hope you are well and will stay in touch. I feel badly I don’t have enough time to write to all of you individually but right now there is little time. I hope to catch up soon! Take care, Becky