do men and women ACTUALLY pronounce vowel sounds differently? ponder.

mico wrote this note last year after frannie visited my class for a few days. it reads: "i miss franey can you tell us ples MSB (his initials). " all i have to say about this is long live inventive, authentic spelling! and mico!

in between lamenting my existence last week, i was also putting together a two day phonics workshop for kawanu school, just up the dirt road from my little office.

a teacher from the school came to the office a bit over a month ago asking for assistance, which was doubly exciting because--whoa--they WANTED our help. were ASKING for it.

i like being wanted.

(who doesn't though, really?

seriously, who?)

anyway, i compiled a bunch of materials from previous volunteers, from my own schooling, and from the internet (i love that internet...even if goes slower than my fingernails grow...) and put together a pretty cheery little introduction to phonics.

because the teachers at kawanu have never knowingly experienced phonics before.

for all you teachers and aware citizens, let that digest. for everyone else, that means they had no knowledge of the connection between the sounds that letters make and their symbols while reading.

and I got to teach it to them!

maybe you have to really care about education and recognize the importance of invented spelling and the excitement of when a child is able to communicate or learn through writing and text for the first time because of a tool you have helped them obtain to understand...

but, man, it was an exciting thing!

i gave the teachers a pre and post assessment, too, just to track their progress, because, well, i wanted to know if i was effective.

and i kinda was...

where the pre-assesment had question marks and "mi no save" and "no idea" written in the small blank spaces under the questions about phonics, if phonics is important, what indicates the mastery of a letter, etc, the post test was loaded with responses. 

and MOST of them were right!!

for a realist who is constantly questioning her effectiveness, this is big news.

Phonics prevails!

we spent a lot of time on vowel sounds, because they can get a little tricky, you know? loooong and short ones.

tricky stuff. 

and kalomor, in a bit of confusion with long "a" and short "a", let me know that, he was pretty certain that he made a long "a" sound when he said the word "apple" and that women just speak differently than men. all like it was a fact and such.

usually, i let the made up things that men say in this country go... for example, that the devil breaks into people's homes (that sneaky devil), that if you drink hot water when it is hot outside, you will no longer feel hot because your body will be the same temperature (a vanuatu science lesson, if you will!), that you won't get a girl pregnant if you have sex under a mango tree (actually, i did NOT let that one go...i clarified that "under a mango tree" needed to be replaced with " approximately 99% of the time IF you are wearing a condom"...but whatever), but this just didn't slide.

so instead of getting all attitudy (you don't KNOW me, kalomor), i put a sweet smile on my face and said, "oh really. interesting. can you give me an example?"

and then we tried it out. with like four words. he disproved his own theory...

"no, nevermind." he clarified after.

i took that to mean, "you were exactly right, wise teacher, even though you do not have a penis, which still makes you inferior to me."

i'll take it.

and am glad his students will know better too.

score one for the future of education in vanuatu. 

and for phonics being fun. have you ever spelled a word by clapping and snapping during every other letter and then cheering at the end with a fist pump and all ("t" (snap), "o" (clap), "p" (snap), "top", YEAH!!! (fist pump)??

because I have. say what you will, phonics can be fun stuff.

and the headmistress of kawanu thought so too on her survey. who would've thought...