With her seniors, it can be a very different experience.  “In IB, I feel like we get to have heavy conversations and discuss as adults in a collaborative way where I think everybody’s voice counts.  It feels like I wish every classroom could be; I think it feels authentic.  But at the same time, it is a lot of work.  It’s a lot of grading, pushing, trying to stay ahead of them.”  What does Ms. Occhiogrosso dislike most about each class? “In ninth grade, I hate going over codes of behavior.  You did not raise your hand – that’s not going to fly.  You cannot shut another person’s computer – that’s not going to work.  There’s an element they are not aware of, those lines don’t seem to matter yet.  Sometimes they don’t seem to understand that there are ramifications beyond this moment, and that’s tough to deal with.”  Her complaint about IB is primarily centered on how test-focused the course can be.  “Especially in fall semester, I’m rushing towards assignments,” she sighed.

But for Ms. Occhiogrosso, those negative aspects of school are far outweighed by the positives.  One of the most pleasurable is her marriage to Mr. Occhiogrosso. “It’s really fun [to be married to another teacher at the school].  I think that it makes this job so much more enjoyable and fun-filled for me.  I love that if I need something I can call him up, and he can run down, or we can share a lunch.  I like that we get to carpool together, and we have shared experiences so we can bounce ideas off of each other.”  Being married to another teacher, Ms. Occhiogrosso feels, “pushes us to be the best teachers that we can be, and supports us, because it provides a common bond that I don’t think you get if you are outside of that.”

Ms. Occhiogrosso is not without her own complains about Harriton.  “So much of this job is like being on an island.  There’s really little communication between the disciplines about a student holistically.”  But Ms. Occhiogrosso rushes to add that, “I like the students and I like the community.”  In fact, she feels the fact that, “this is a pretty awesome place to be” often gets overlooked by students and faculty alike.

Ms. Occhiogrosso continues to be self-deprecating when asked to talk about herself.  “I am absolutely a hundred percent awkward in social situations.  I do not deal well with adults.  In fact, in a meeting a week ago, my voice broke when speaking to adults.  I am awkward; I am geeky.”  Perhaps this is true, but few students who walk into her class can easily believe the self-possessed and stylish woman in front of them thinks of herself as an awkward geek.  Irrespective of her awkwardness, Ms. Occhiogrosso works well with her students, perhaps because she feels “they don’t judge in the same way.”

The Main Line Times reported Mr. Marseille’s reaction to his life-changing experience. He expressed how little justice our family room televisions did on showing how much damage this earthquake really made on the lives of the Haitians. While it is just months away from the one year anniversary of the monster that harmed so many lives, very little improvement has been made and the Haitians are still left hopeless of what there is to come. Mr. Marseille explained the conditions of life on this land telling how the people were barely clothed and had no shelter other than small tents. In addition, they are begging for money and on an average day were served little to no food. The Times also reported Wagner’s first impression after hopping off the plane of how strong the heat was right when they landed.

However, hot weather doesn’t necessarily mean good weather, and the small tents that the people live in aren’t quite rainproof. Marseille explained how hard it was to look at the hundreds of thousands of citizens of Haiti that had no choice but to sleep on the damp floor while he stayed in an air-conditioned, nice, fully-built hotel during torrential downpours.

It wasn’t just the living conditions that hurt Mr. Marseille’s heart while he was in Haiti. It was specifically the lack of educational systems. After gathering with politicians, principles, teachers, and many more form the area of Port-au-Prince, the Main Line Times reports that Wagner was informed that while schools may have had around five hundred students prior to the earthquake, many schools are left with almost two hundred children. Although they are grateful for the few students that they still have, there is very little that they can do with them now that their facilities, books, and materials have all been destroyed.

With the motto of Lower Merion School District “Enter to learn; Go fourth to serve,” Wagner Marseille was determined to use his personal experiences from our strong district and apply them to repairing education in Haiti.

After returning back to a school district that displays the opposite of Marseille’s sites from Haiti, he was determined to do whatever he could to have LMSD work towards making a difference in the lives of the less fortunate people that he had seen this summer. He has begun his focus on targeting educational and health to ensure that students can get an education and can stay healthy regardless of what their lives may look like outside of school. However, Marseille learned that it is important to focus on specific schools and to not just donate to large organizations. The more specific LMSD can be with how we help schools in Haiti, the more schools they can get fully up and running.

The people, facilities, and materials that Wagner Marseille viewed this summer showed him a side that he had never imagined in Haiti. With the endless amounts of technology that our school district offers, Marseille is positive that there is a large variety of steps that can be taken to turn this all around.