Posts

Day 13

Image
This morning our final day began by having breakfast at the Ramada Princess Hotel in Belize, City.  Afterwards, we took the hotel shuttle to Stella Maris to complete our final day with them.  Once we got there, the teachers and students greeted us at a school assembly they were having. There was a lot of singing, clapping, and smiling coming from the teachers and children.  It was great to see all the hugs the Students for Global Communication (SGC) were getting from everyone at this event.  After the school assembly, a few of the SGC students and I walked back upstairs to the resource room where we had sorted out school supplies from two large suit cases to donate to the teachers at Stella Maris school. The teachers quickly took the various materials as their need for basic school supplies became apparent. At the end of our morning we walked around the school saying our final farewells to children and teachers alike.  Many hugs and some tears were shed as we said goodbye.  The SGC st
Post a Comment
Read more

Day 12

Image
Today marks the fourth day we have spent with the children at Stella Maris School. All of the graduate students are assigned to two classrooms- one class for the morning and one in the afternoon. By working with two classrooms, we have the opportunity to work multiple teachers and students. All of the graduate students have built relationships with the children within the classrooms that we meet and with children that we met playing and talking to outside of the classroom. It will be very hard to say goodbye tomorrow. Since there has been another university helping out at Stella Maris, it has been difficult to find the right balance between offering help and not overstepping boundaries. The other group of students visiting from a different university are undergraduate students majoring in education and speech pathology. However, it gives us the opportunity to work with other people; in the future, we will be collaborating with other professionals.  The students at Stella M
Post a Comment
Read more

Day 11

Image
Day 11: After being woken by our phone alarm, we started our morning by getting a glimpse at the view from outside our hotel. We can see the tide of the waves and as they hit splash water over the sidewalk. Shortly after getting prepared, we headed over downstairs for breakfast buffet. We sat together as a group and discussed our daily plan and exchanged thoughts and comments. Breakfast was great! We then made our way to the van that was providing us transportation to take us to Stella Maris. We have continued to assist teachers, teacher aids, and all other staff to make the best use of our time while we are able to. Providing therapy for them this few past days has been a very rewarding and humbling experience. Every single child is special in the very own unique way. The teachers are very welcoming and express the appreciation at every moment they are able to.  Many teachers have requested help to augment their classroom presentation. We have learned that the teachers are truly inv
Post a Comment
Read more

Day 10

Image
Belize Trip Day 10 – Tuesday, January 8 th Our group of study abroad students spent the second day at Stella Maris School after observing the students and teachers on day 1. From our observations, we were able to brainstorm and come up with ideas to assist the teachers in promoting communication from all of the students, especially those with behavioral issues such as autism spectrum disorders. In the morning, the six of us led a PowerPoint presentation to the teachers of Stella Maris offering them resources and ideas to implement into the classroom. Our presentation included information regarding the basics on literacy such as phonemic awareness, segmentation, blending, and rhyming of words to facilitate the student’s reading skills. We noticed that this was one of the areas in which most of the teachers asked for assistance in, so we also provided literacy activities that we created the night before. These activities were made for the teachers to use in the classroom to generat
Post a Comment
Read more

Day 9

Image
Day 9: January 7 th , 2019 The morning after we tubed the beautiful caves of Belize and zipped through the huge jungles around us, the real adventures began. We headed to Stella Maris School, where an out of this world experience awaited us.  We woke up bright and early. Now this was a task that took us a bit of work, the tiredness of preparing about 6 hours earlier was still on our eyes. Although we were a bit drained from all the excursions, all of us students drove down to the school with excitement of meeting the beautiful students. When we arrived, we met the principal of the school and were able to have a tour of their campus by the reading teacher, Ms. Gentle. After a morning of greetings and little conversations with the teachers, staff, and students, it was time for lunch.  After our bellies were full, we headed down to the classrooms and spent the rest of the afternoon observing the classroom, observing the way the teachers interacted with the students. We noted th
Post a Comment
Read more

Day 8

Image
Sunday, January 6, 2019 Our week of excursions is coming to an end, and today we did our last activities ZIPLINING and CAVE TUBING! We departed from Caye Caulker around 9:00 am and made a 45-minute ferry trip back to Belize city. Despite getting very sunburned and bitten by sand flies this island was very welcoming. We arrived back to Belize city at 10:00 am we were picked up again by our shuttle which would take us to our excursion sites. We arrived at the site and decided to do zip lining first as we would be doing a lot of walking. Nobody in the group had zip lined before so it was a great experience to see everyone’s excitement. We did a “trial” line and this got everyone more excited! Our tour guide Stephen was great as he took videos of the whole line and allowed us to take pictures after every zip line. During this excursion, we had many laughs as there was falls and even one of our members flipped upside down while another one hit a tree. Do not worry there was a cus
Post a Comment
Read more

Day 7

Image
January 5, 2019 It has been quite an eventful, fear-facing day for the Javelinas. After a quick breakfast at a quaint café, we made our way to the pier at a place on the island called The Split. There, we rented snorkeling equipment and climbed aboard a boat headed for the coral reef. Our feet dangled off the boat’s edge, being gently sprayed by the jade colored waters of the ocean, our backs feeling the sting of the sun. Soon we were in the water, buoyed by our life jackets, masks suctioned onto our faces, and snorkels secure. Even the 2 students who could not swim were braving the water. As I gingerly peeked under the surface, all my anxieties about being in the water melted away. There, under the rippling waves, was a world teeming with life. The coral swayed with the tide, the fish flashed us their colored scales, gazing absently at us swimming past. We swam with nurse sharks and sting rays, both magnificent and powerful creatures who glided past us effortlessly. It was an in
Post a Comment
Read more