A Day in the Life of a Coral Reef Ed-Ventures Student Teacher
By Elizabeth Thomas (‘05)

Friday, July 8, 2005 San Pedro, Belize
end of Coral Ed-Ventures week 1

This week has been busy, but so much fun at the same time. Katie and I get up early to go running, and that’s probably the slowest part of our day. As the “tamales!” man wheels by our apartment peddling food, we all rush to eat, pack teaching supplies and snacks, cover ourselves with sunscreen, and leave to walk to school by 8 am. When we get there, prepared to set up for the day, many children are already playing, chattering, and demanding our attention.

At 9 am, we start the day by reading a story, then move on to “On the Spot,” a game during which the children can share anything they saw, learned or experienced on or about the coral reef. We then break into groups for our daily lessons. We have snack at 10:30, and after snack we play games before returning to our groups to finish the lessons. “Camouflage!” and “What’s hiding in the reef Miss Shark?” are the children’s favorite games. The program is over at 11:30, but a few of the children stay to walk back along the beach with us after clean-up.

I wear my bathing suit under my shorts and t-shirt so that I can jump into the water as soon as I reach Amigos del Mar, the dive shop dock near our apartment. I have a few minutes of quiet time to float in the warm, clear ocean before the dive masters start coming back from their morning dives and the children start arriving after they’ve had their lunch. We have fun playing with the children around the docks.

When I start to feel tired or hungry or sunburned, I head inside. I have lunch and maybe run some errands, we meet to prepare for the next day, and then it’s back into the water I go. By about 2:30, there are at least fifty children playing in the water around Amigos del Mar, and I have a blast with them. I love splashing, chasing, wrestling, sharing my swim goggles and my mask and snorkel, showing them the fish and turtles under the dock and having them show me the spotted eagle rays and starfish they find.

These children grow up in and around the water, and I sense that this kind of experiential, hands-on exploration of the natural world is incredibly valuable to them. Coral Ed-Ventures is particularly important because these children do not have many hands-on activities or creative outlets in school since the teaching style is so didactic, and the system is stretched so thin that there are often thirty students to one teacher. I am glad Coral Ed gives us the opportunity to teach them about the ocean and the reef by playing games and exploring with them.

As it starts to get dark around 6 pm, the children wander home, barefoot along the beach, and we go home to cook and eat dinner. After dinner, we go for a walk on the beach, where we watch storms roll in over the island, or lie at the end of the docks marveling at how low the Big Dipper and North Star are on the horizon. And then we head home to collapse into bed by 11 pm.