Saipan Ramblings

After a wonderful evening with cheap, good food, visiting with good friends and a good nights sleep, I am trying to gain a more relaxed perspective on the last two weeks. It still is hard!

Yes, the economy is bad! Yes, the scores of our students are low! Yes, their reading levels are lower than we would like! Yes, if we hired teachers that knew the english language things might improve more quickly! Yes, if more of them passed the Praxis, teaching would improve!

But, there a lot of other factors that affect our students, our schools, our classrooms and our teachers! For instance, lack of support from political officials, school system administration and yes, sometimes parents.

I have been lucky in this area, as this last year my students' parents were supportive of both myself and their kids. Working together, we helped to raise the students reading levels to the highest in our grade level! Partnerships can and do pay off!! I hope this will continue this next year as I will be looping with my kids. We still have lots of hard work ahead of us and will continue to do what we can. That is one of my pet peeves, "Just Try!". Well, I will try to be a partner in this two year program and hope that it will benefit my students!

Enough rambling for today!