The Best Laid Plans . . .

It seems a bit anti-climactic to write this blog now—three days after my first day at the Haiti Center for Inclusive Education—but Hurricane Irma got in the way.

            Monday, September 4, was the first day of school for Haitian schools.  I couldn’t be present at the Haiti Center for Inclusive Education because I need the paying gig at Morning Star.  However, I was up early and ready to go on Tuesday the 5^th for my first day at the Center.  I arrived at 8:00, thinking I would be the first (as a boss should be), but no—the teachers were already there!  Good for them.

            We have 50 children enrolled now, and I thought I would see little kids running around and playing.  Nope.  I’d say only about 30 kids showed up; not sure whether that was due to not having uniforms ready or what, but we certainly did not have full house.  And, most of the pre-school kids were crying.  One poor little cried all day, except when she was eating her snack of cold French fries and a cold hot dog (more on snacks later!).  Pretty much the only kids who played were the kids from Notre Maison, and that was because they’d been to the Center for summer camp and because they know each other.

            I took a walk into the station room thinking kids might be playing with some of the toys.  Nope.  More crying kids and no one sure what to do.  Some of the kids had grabbed a MatchBox car or two, but they weren’t playing with them; they holding onto them as if they were life lines!  Shoulda heard the wailing when we had to take the cars away and go outside for the raising of the flag and the singing of the national anthem (Monter le Drapeau). 

Kindergarten class

            I have never worked with little kids, but I wasn’t totally surprised by the crying.  I was more surprised by how long they could cry and easily it was to get them started again once they had stopped!

Mixed grade room

            I had visions of how the school day would go, and pretty much none of it happened! The schedule that Gertrude and I put together and that the teachers modified so did not work!  Academic classes (some) were too short.  Rest time was too long.  Somehow kids never got outside to play.  The station room wasn’t used at all.  Snacks were eaten in the classrooms, not the cafeteria.  We did not have enough water.  The multi-grade level room seemed haphazard because neither of the administrators were sure what their responsibilities were.  They’d been told that they would be teaching those kids, but nothing had been planned out for sure. 

            So many logistical things were overlooked in our planning.  Like, no one told the teachers that we had purchased a water pitcher for each room so that during snack the aide could go fill up the pitcher and bring water back.  We did not designate which bathroom was for boys and which for girls (I still haven’t purchased the signs, but we could have least told the teachers!).  We didn’t not figure on how disruptive it would be for adults to be going through the pre-K room to get to the storage rooms.  I swear, every time I went through the room, another kid would start crying (probably just after the teachers had gotten her settled down!). 

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            We—Gertrude, the other administrators, and I—failed to think of writing up some rules and regulations for the kids to follow.  Like, you don’t go into another classroom unless the teacher has asked you to.  You don’t run in the hallway.  You don’t enter the office area.  You don’t throw rocks. You don’t walk around

            I know that lots of kids in Haiti don’t get proper nutrition, so I wanted to provide a healthy daily snack for the kids.  A couple of snags with that plan—no one told me that parents would send a snack with the kids; I did not realize that the school does not have a refrigerator to keep anything cold; the kitchen does not have shelves on which to put cups, plates, utensils, etc.  And, everything needs to be locked up so that it isn’t stolen (the peanut butter and crackers are locked in a storage room nowhere near the kitchen, we have but 1-2 butter knives, and the Notre Maison kids who are expecting the snack are spread out over four different classrooms).  Wouldn’t it make sense to keep the food in the kitchen where it needs to be prepared?  Wouldn’t it make more sense to bring the kids to the cafeteria where the food is instead of delivering the food to them? 

            So, the year has not started as I thought it would, but that’s okay!  It’s started.  Nothing that starts for the first time looks like it does on paper, and there are always unforeseen needs/glitches.  And, Hurricane Irma certainly affected the start of the year—we only had two days before we had to cancel school because of the weather!