Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Education Conference, small steps

Yes, there was a total solar eclipse here.
Yes, I missed it.

So this week is the education conference. We are currently half way through it.

The opening ceremony was a lot of fun. As always it started off with lots of food. All the teachers, principals, secretaries, and computer people swarmed the coffee and doughnuts and fruit. Then it was time to begin to conference. They started off with the national anthem. and let me tell you, the Palau anthem is how national anthems should be. Pretty, built in harmonies, and matches the country's feel perfectly (its very very long...they have all the time in the world to sing it...haha).

Then there were chants (yes chants) and speeches given by certain chiefs and directors of the MOE. They then gave reports on various areas of the MOE. My favorite part was the school breakdown, and whenever they announced each school all the teachers from the school would stand up and cheer and be like "WE'RE AWESOME! Y'ALL SUCK!" haha. not really. But I bet you that's what they were thinking. Some schools had like 3 teachers...and that was it. For an entire 1-8th grade school. While the main school had about 40 people. They then gave out teacher of the year. She cried, and won 2500 dollars and they decorated her in flowers. I think its a very special thing here to get a reef of flowers cause everyone said "wooooooooow" when she got her flowers.

After some more...reports. opening ceremony was over. I went home to work on my presentation some more.

This morning I woke up at a lovely 6:00am and got my things together.

My presentation was a simple how to use MS word and excel. The room was PACKED. It made me so happy. I made them laugh with my LOVELY American charm and wit...hahaha. Not that much, but they seemed to have fun as I joked about things. Was I saving the world? no, but if you can teach the teachers MS word, they can teach their students, and in the job market here in Palau, knowing how to use Microsoft is the KEY to getting a good paying job.

Saving the world? no, but making small steps.

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