Day 6

Today was my first day at La Isla Bonita Primary school in San Pedro. I went with a group of undergraduate students who are student teaching at the school. In Belize, they follow British programming, so classes are Infant 1 and 2 followed by six standards (Kindergarten-7th grade) at the school then four forms in secondary/ high school. At this particular school, it is a Catholic school and parents pay tuition; students wear uniforms. The school in itself is very different from schools in the U.S. As you  go through the gate, you enter into the playground then walk into a courtyard type area, where they sell snacks (including candy and soda as early as 8 AM!) and have a "cafeteria", which is a window where students get their meals. There is also an area with picnic tables where students eat. Throughout the day, students have math, English Language Arts, Spanish (every other day), health, social studies, science, penmanship and in some classrooms, a time for arts and crafts. In addition, they have a morning and afternoon break as well as an hour for lunch.

There is a group of 14 undergraduate student teachers from UNCW who are also here and a group of them are at this Primary school who I went to school with (on a bike... in a skirt!). One student teacher is a Special Education major, specializing in adapted curriculum (which is what I teach; more severe students) so she has created a plan and schedule to pull students with disabilities (some identified and some not) 1:1 and created goals for them (and is doing great!). I had the opportunity to observe her working with a few of these students. Unfortunately, there are no Special Education teachers in the country of Belize and therefore once she leaves, these students will not have the extra support and individualized instruction that she is providing and that they need so we began brainstorming ways to be able to sustain her efforts for these students to get the support they need. I also had the opportunity to observe in a number of classrooms; administrators/ teachers have a lot of concerns about students who have more attentional challenges as they disrupt schools so I observed a few of these students and came up with some classroom interventions that teachers will hopefully be able to implement easily. There are a few students in the school with more moderate to severe disabilities, including students with Down Syndrome, Cerebral Palsy and students who are Deaf or Blind. There are also many students who would be considered to have learning or mild intellectual disabilities.

Instruction was different than in the U.S. The majority of instruction that I observed was lecture, as the teacher stood at the front of the room and presented the information to the students, which is different from more modern education in the U.S. as we are more accustomed to small, cooperative groups. Student engagement and discipline is definitely an issue here as many students were disengaged and/or disruptive and teachers lacked relevant consequences and follow through. What was interesting is that all of the grades plan together and are all working on the same topics (everyone is learning to tell time); it seemed to be that some of the lessons (worksheets) in the early grades were not developmentally appropriate. I was told that many of the students with disabilities (all in regular classrooms with teachers without any special education training) were often left sitting in the corner as no one knows how to really work with them. One teacher/ student teacher did express a need for learning how to access/ differentiate lessons and work for students with disabilities so this is a topic that I will be exploring further. Tomorrow is another day at the school! I will add pictures tomorrow, I was slacking on the pictures today!