Majuro
 

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Our Team:
Majuro is the capitol of the Marshall Islands. Rita Elementary School is located at the south end of the island past the main town. Principal Edwin Tommar is committed to providing a quality school for the students of Rita. It is the largest elementary school on Majuro. The school is seeking ways of building parent participation. Several of Rita’s teachers have been involved in Pacific Voices projects, Nashton Nashon, Herbiana Lakbel, Morita Aaron, Rubon Rubon, and Lawrence Issac.
Our Projects:

Kojemlok

 When teacher Nashton questioned his 6th grade class about how breadfruit and other local foods are cooked he got back a lot of blank looks. He asked them to do research by talking to their families. They found that in their class traditional ways were being lost. The 6th grade cluster decided to learn more about Marshallese culture. They visited Waan Aelon in Majol (Canoes of the Marshalls) a non profit group formed to learn and teach about as well as build traditional Marshallese canoes. Legend says the Marshalls were the fastest canoes in the Pacific. Disputes were sometimes settled by canoe races rather than wars. We took digital pictures with the mavica camera and filmed the lesson on the Hi-8 camera to share with other classes. Here is a glimpse of some of the activities the 6th grade enjoyed over the year.

Breadfruit

 

 
The students in Nashton's class researched breadfruit. They learned how to prepare and cook breadfruit in the traditional ways. They recorded their findings on videotape selecting one student for each section. Their teacher is also a gifted artist and drew pictures to accompany their findings. They scanned these pictures into the computer. Then Nashton imported everything into iMovie and edited it for this final product to be shared with the rest of the school.