Successes

Well, little things are happening, but the important thing is that things are happening. Here’s some good things that have been happening recently:

We got a shipment of books from America, and I went to one of the most interested teachers and gave her class a demonstration on how to take care of books, and gave each of them a library card. So now they come pretty much every day and check out books. It’s great, because they are excited, they like the books, and the teacher is encouraging them to read. Two of the students, Elaine and Ervino, love coming to the library, they ask me if they can sweep and straighten books on recess. Ervino likes to be the bouncer and stand by the door so no one comes in with food or drink. It’s hilarious, and I love it. Students from all grades come in to look at books on their breaks, which is good, but I can’t give everyone a library card because we only have about 100 books, and there are about 45 kids in each class. So 2 classes could wipe out all the books every day, and there would be nothing left for kids to come in and read. I’m trying to work out ways to get around this until I can get the rest of the donated books here.

I also have finally started the kids working on the World Map Project. I got one of the social studies teachers to do it with me, and we’ve got some of the motivated, top students working on it. So far we’ve painted the background blue, and played some geography games. I hope we can hold it together to finish this project by the end of the school year. The map is about 10 feet long by 6 feet high, so it’s a big undertaking. But I really think it will benefit the school if it’s done right. Some of the teachers have asked me if Canada is part of the United States. The teachers. They could use a map.

Another cool thing is that I have been matched up with a class for the World Wise Schools program. This is where a teacher requests to have a correspondence with a Peace Corps volunteer. The class writes letters to the volunteer, and the volunteer shares the culture of their host country. Any teachers can request a volunteer, so if you know any who might be interested, have them check out the PC website. Anyway, so my class is an 11th grade English class in Texas. The teacher was a volunteer in Paraguay in the 80’s. I think it will be neat.

My teacher’s English class has now completed 2 sessions. The first session was not good. It was pretty awful. I worked hard on the 2nd session, and it came out MUCH better. The teachers had fun, they paid attention and participated, and they practiced their English. We have 6 new student teachers at our school, and they are going to start attending too. I’m excited about that, because I think it’s much easier to impart teaching techniques and strategies to teaching students than to teachers who have been doing things their way for years. I just hope I can keep the sessions interesting and relevant. The teachers are terrible students. They come late, they don’t have paper or pens, they talk, and they complain if we keep working even one minute past 5 (even though we didn’t start until 4:30) But I can handle all that, as long as they are participating and trying the activities.

So hooray! Oh, and I also made fried rice that was not just edible, but actually good! And I did it on two separate occasions, which I think means I know how to cook something! Hooray for that too!!