Dragon Fruit

Mid terms for the first 4 weeks are nearly here for teachers at Saipan Community School and things are not looking good for many of the junior high students as many of them are failing. I am not worried about this because the students need a wakeup call and at SCS parents and students come in to talk about mid terms with the teacher if they are failing. I look forward to talking with parents and letting them know how their children are doing. Students are failing in both Science & Math and Language Arts it is a problem across the board. Then again, failing at SCS is not like failing at the public schools on the island because the grading scale is 94-96% is an A-. It is a way to distinguish the school from others in the area. So, failing at SCS may be like getting a D or C for some students on the mainland. I will keep you posted as to what I have to do for this mid-term in order to help my students. I will be working over the weekend to finish getting everything graded and percentages figured, double figured, maybe even triple figured (I am an English teacher, not a math major).
As I write this blog Kara is watching the movie “The Proposal” with two other female teachers and having a good bonding time as often happens on the weekends. We just got back from eating at “Shirley’s Coffee House” (the diner is the one I mentioned in a previous blog as being like an oriental Perkins restaurant) it was a good way to relax on our Friday evening. Since I am writing about eating I should share my experience with having eaten “Dragon Fruit.” It was presented to us one morning during a teacher’s meeting and I knew I would have to try because it looked so exotic. It has a strange exterior with ridges that look like scales on a dragon. The inside is purple with little black seeds that resemble those inside a kiwi. In all honesty, the fruit tastes very similar to a kiwi. This particular dragon fruit was a little bland, but it was still tasty. If the fruit were a little less ripe it may have tasted better.
Another thing relating to food is our plan for Monday. The principal invited all the teachers to his house for a Labor Day grilled chicken barbecue. We are not sure how we are going to get there yet as the repairs on the car we are buying have not been completed. I’m sure it will be fun, but like all business related lunch outings I feel somewhat apprehensive about going as one feels obligated to go and perhaps nervous too. It will be nice to have another day to grade and finish midterm reports as we have to do all of them by hand because the school does not have a DDN campus like many public schools on the mainland. In a way it is good for me because I feel more like a teacher keeping a hard copy and figuring out percentages.
I guess that is all I have to say for now; I hope the reading was good and entertaining.
Grant Out