Teaching in the Caribbean

Five days to take-off. I'm going over to lead on-site seminars in the Caribbean: Supervision & Management, Total Quality Management, Leadership, and Conflict Resolution. How did I get so lucky? Here's my story:

I am an adjunct professor in evening certificate programs. A few quarters ago, the school where I teach had a delegation of students from Trinidad & Tobago come over for one of those certificate programs. The students stayed all quarter, and had a full complement of program classes during the day. Five of them took my Supervision & Management class in the evening, on their own time. They were quite delightful and lent the class a unique perspective on supervision and management issues in another country. Of course those pesky human beings are the same everywhere, but there are cultural norms that differ as well. It was all great fun, and the students did very well in my class.

(It was, however, a shock when in total honesty one of them admitted at the end of the quarter that she had only taken it to fill time in the evenings so she wouldn't get bored. For some reason, I'd never thought of that. We instructors tend to impute loftier goals to students than are real, sometimes. I've grown accustomed to the 'because my boss said I had to take it' reason for attendance but 'better than being bored' cut me right down to size! At least she said it hadn't been a waste of time.) But I digress...

As this was happening in real time, my school was continuing to work on an ongoing relationship with this company in Trinidad. The following quarter (or so) the school sent over two instructors to teach instead of bringing the whole group over here. Which makes sense - it's cheaper to fly and keep two over there for an accelerated quarter than to fly and keep 20 people here. Plus, it was rather hard on anyone with a family to be away from them for an entire 3 months. (And if it wasn't - they weren't telling....grin.)

Needless to say, everyone on campus was green with envy about the two who got to go to Trinidad. Cheerful begging to travel along in luggage, etc., was the vogue for weeks. Since I love to snorkel, I was especially green, but as an evening, part-time adjunct, I knew I would never be on that magic list - being at the bottom of the academic food chain, as it were.

Proving once again that anyone, even I, can be wrong, I was asked to be one of the instructors this time. So I've got five days left to put together lesson plans to teach 11 credits in 4 1/2 hours a day for five weeks. Maybe. We understand that Friday afternoons are traditionally not a time of much work in Trinidad, and we really have no idea what to expect.

Adding to the fun, I had never yet found a really good text for TQM and had to order blindly off of a website, so I've never seen my textbook. Fun! AND - usually with textbooks, there is a teacher's edition (that would be the one with answers) and a variety of supplementary materials - lecture outlines, test questions, that sort of thing. To my surprise and chagrin, it turns out the textbook I finally ordered by one of the most sophisticated search mechanisms possible (What do you have enough of in stock) after having the first six or seven be out of print, not enough available, etc., etc., has no such materials whatsoever. So that should be fun!

Now all I have to do is figure out how to take all of my teaching materials along with me. I'm a paper kind of gal - lots of my materials are on my laptop but just as many aren't - one builds up a formidable library of paper materials over the years. And when one is flying blind with textbooks and teaching venue and....basically everything, one wishes to have those materials on hand. So the luggage is getting a bit out of hand.

Clothing - not bad. Light stuff - summery, etc. Though those who have gone before say that it is customary to not wear sleeveless shirts there. So there have to be some jacket-type items along. Though one suspects that Trinidad will just have to get used to seeing Ramona's sausage arms for this time period - it's gonna be hot, hot, hot by my standards. Air-conditioned inside, of course, but hot outside. So more clothes necessary to accommodate hot outside, cold inside.

Apparently they also don't wear thong-style sandals. However, that's all I have, so they are also going to have to get used to Ramona's sausage toes. But I digress...

Snorkel gear doesn't take up too much room. Taking a Brita and filter as I am manic about icky-tasting water. Bulky, but light. Then there's reading material - at times like this I wish I wasn't such a fast reader. But it's mostly teaching materials. Sigh. Plus we have to take all textbooks with us. I will meet up with Sharon, my co-teacher on this adventure, at the airport at the crack of dawn on Sunday, and she and her hubby will bring the crates of books. This should get interesting. We'll hope the luggage over-charges are less than the limit on my credit card!