Today JoAnne and I volunteered at Black Point All-Age School. We got up early, put on our yellow shirts (same as students’ uniforms) and rode the dinghy into town. We got there about an hour early, as Lorraine at Lorraine’s Cafe told us we could come in before she opened. She no doubt did this because Bill, JoAnne’s husband, had painted signs for her advertising her free wifi. She arrived at 8 am to let us in to use the wifi lab. Joanne had several MagicJack calls to make and we wanted to get some last minute e-mail and blog work done as we are leaving tomorrow. Lorraine’s wifi is free, but everyone is supposed to leave a donation which we gladly do. Garbage disposal is also free on the island with the request for a donation. In other words, everyone here bends over backwards to be welcoming.
The school asks cruisers to volunteer, but being the giving and helpful people cruisers are, Black Point School sometimes has so many volunteers they have to turn them away. We were lucky that it was just us and three “regulars” today. Barbara rents a house on the island for six months and volunteers every day at the school, doing remedial reading with the children. The other couple, whom the children call “Brother” and “Sister,” also spend half of the year here. They run an after school tutoring program and come to the school during the day to help also. They are from Michigan ( I had to mention that I lived in football rival Ohio for 25 years) and sold everything they owned in 1996 and bought a sailboat. They lived on it and sailed for the next ten years and then moved to Black Point for the winter. They spend the summers traveling the States in their RV. They said it is their “calling” to be here, and they are wonderful people. They aren’t educators but give of their time every day. They had to leave to go down to the dock to pick up boxes of books a cruiser was bringing here. It turns out that a sailing group, the SSCA (Southern Seas Cruising Association) gets textbooks from Florida when they get new ones and discard the old. A member of SSCA delivers them here and I suppose to many other places as well. I met the cruiser later in Lorraine’s and he just brought them on his boat as he was stopping here anyway.
Being a retired teacher, I know how difficult it can be to have visitors in the classroom. It takes a lot of time to prepare work for them to do, but probably there are a great many experienced teachers who are cruisers and they would be able to help in many ways with little or no explanation about their duties. Also, like many teachers, the Black Point staff doesn’t like to have their students pulled out of class, even if it is for helpful tutoring. This is because a teacher then has to spend additional time getting the student caught up with what they missed when they were out of the room. Therefore, we weren’t sure if there would be anything for us to do. Brother and Sister were going to pull 8th graders out of their math class to help them, but the teacher didn’t want that done today. We suggested that perhaps the four of us could go in and simply sit next to the students who were struggling and keep them focused. It turned out to be the most successful method they had used, according to Brother and Sister, and something they had never tried before.
The teacher was asking one student at a time to go to the blackboard and solve an algebraic equation, such as 8X + 5 = 3X + 15. The other students sat and watched from their desks or didn’t watch. We each sat next to a student and had him/her write the same equation on a piece of paper and solve it without watching the child at the board, then check to see if they were correct. With lots of encouragement, they gained confidence. Deshan, whom I helped, started out peaking at the board for each solution and at the end of the class, she was beating each child at the board with the correct answer, solved hers at the board successfully, and helped others at our table. I did nothing but encourage her, gave her a few tips, and praised her success. The one problem was that she couldn’t add, subtract, multiply or divide without drawing sticks on her paper and figuring out the answer. The algebra she understood - but needed lots of practice memorizing tables and facts. We also had a chance to observe Ms. Scott in her 4/5 combination in the photo above. She was doing a great job of keeping the children focused with games while they learned about compound words.
We then went to find the principal, Roberta McKenzie. I have never seen a more “hands on” principal, and I have worked with many. Roberta was never in her office, but rather visiting the classrooms (1-3, 4/5, 6/7, and 8). Actually, I am not sure if that is the correct division of grades, but they were combined grade classrooms. We asked if we could help again in the afternoon and Roberta suggested we return after lunch and recess to do read aloud with the younger students while the older ones had silent reading. We gladly agreed. When we got back, the children were still at recess. In the photo at the left, you can see the view they have from their playground. Not bad! The bell rang and they lined up. All students in the Bahamas wear school uniforms as that includes dress shirts and ties for the boys and skirts for the girls. We’ve seen lots of yellow shirts hanging on clothes lines in many yards on the island.
I read to the 1-3 graders (photo at left) and JoAnne did the same in Ms. Scott’s 4/5 room. Books were ready for us and I read about Henry and Mudge. Mudge is a dog and when I told the students a little about myself, they remembered seeing Daisy, as she has been walking with us on the island. I asked if they had any questions for me and one young girl asked if I live on an island. Wouldn’t that be nice!! Actually, I guess we do live on an island. It just moves from place to place whenever we want a change of scenery.
We left after read aloud and went back to our boats. I enjoyed a frappuccino. I’ve been using a mixture I bought at Sam’s Club to make them, and they are almost as good as the Starbucks ones we are addicted to and have missed drinking. I even brought whipped cream and caramel sauce to use on top of the drink. What a luxury!! Tomorrow at 8 am, we will pull up our anchors and head the 12 miles to Farmer’s Cay. The wind will be 11-15 kts from the SE and we will be sailing southeast. We have to start that early because high tide is late in the morning and along the way there are some depths we’ll have to watch so the high tide will give us about three more feet.
We’ve enjoyed Black Point immensely as it is not a “touristy” place and we’ve gotten a real feel for the way the Bahamians live. Their slogan is “Stick to the Point” and they do everything to make cruisers want to “stick” here. Everyone is extremely friendly, and that is on purpose. I totally understand why Barbara, Brother, and Sister have come to live here and volunteer. It’s an inviting place, but also one where you feel you can contribute your skills to a highly appreciative community. For more photos of our visit to Black Point, click here.
