Since November of last year, I've spent a total of seven weeks at home in the United States. These last 11 and a half months have seen me living in three different countries that have really shaped the way I see the world since graduating from college. I'm not the same person who went into this last year with high hopes, but I'm glad to have learned som valuable lessons along the way.
I started my first few weeks in Belize learning a new education system and how important a good education is for the students that I worked with. As I was a starry-eyed student teacher, I had a rather rude awakening upon walking into a ill-equipped classroom, and it was a long three months of having to relearn everything that I had spent the last four years working for.
I grew the most as an educator down there in the jungle of Belize. I learned how to communicate with students who spoke with a heavy accent (many Belizeans speak a dialect of English that is heavily influenced by the local language, Kriol); I learned how to improvise with limited supplies and meet my students where they were rather than where they were supposed to be; and I also learned how to accept failure when it came lesson after lesson. My English department helped me most when it came to adjusting to the Belizean mindset of, "Don't rush, just relax. It'll all work out."
