Teaching in Belize was the experience of a lifetime - I would go back in a heartbeat! As I am writing this a year and a half after teaching there, I decided to take pieces from the last entry of my journal from when I taught there, with a few bits added in.

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

​

25 May 2015

Leaving here feels very strange, as it was our home for a month and it just doesn't quite feel long enough. Even though we were emerged in the culture, met locals in the streets, and worked here, we only saw a fraction of what could be learned from living here for years. 

​

On Tuesday we were coaching after school and some American tourists drove by on a golf cart and started throwing candy at the kids. I'm sure they didn't do this in a mocking way, but it looked like they were stopping to feed wild animals or animals at the zoo - it was sickening to watch. And to think of how they would react if a stranger (or foreigner) did that on a playground in the US. They would freak, call the cops, and it would be sure to be all over the news! I think they just wanted to give the kids a treat but did not consider a classier way to do this or that a donation to a food box might be a more appropriate and meaningful gesture. I think that in living here we have grown to care about these students as if they were our own, and coming with our Canadian backgrounds, we also have our own context for looking at things. Now that we have been living here for a while, we can understand both contexts, rather than just staring in awe at a group of kids playing soccer with no shoes on.

​

Thursday my friend and I went on a last walk through San Mateo. It's instinct to feel pity at the conditions they live in - cramped 1-bedrooms with 10 kids, contaminated water, garbage everywhere, and literally swamp water under the houses. But we also know through knowing these kids and meeting the families that these families love each other and play and laugh and care for each other in ways that we don't see so much anymore in Canada. People in North America are so concerned with keeping their lives busy - they work long hours, they jam their schedule with appointments, clubs, and sports - and they are constantly surrounded by technology. Children don't know how to play anymore. If you watch them at recess or try to take them into nature, it's like they need to relearn how to be a child, have an imagination, and be one with the present and nature. In Belize they have close bonds with their parents and siblings. Kids here on the weekends literally play in the water all day or go hang out with their parents; learning to swim, play games, fishing/crabbing, and about ocean life.

​

In teaching, what I can take from this experience is how important building relationships is. Students need to feel trust and being cared for before taking risks in learning and having confidence in themselves. Doing this on practicum is hard with someone else's classroom and with limited time, but this is definitely a major practice that I must be mindful of in teaching. I also want to focus on hands on learning and questioning the value of worksheets before using them. Seeing these little students (Infant 2 - 5/6 year olds) spending all day copying from the board and needing to study for a 40 page exam (in order to pass and move onto the next grade) really bothered me. However, it also gave me the urge to create meaningful learning experiences for my future students when possible. It forced me to be creative! Students had to copy from the board into their books so they could use their books to study, however I had brought dice, cards, and spent hours cutting out manipulatives so that they could learn in a more fun manner.

​

​