School's Out

No More Pencils, No More Books…

The school year has ended here in Honduras, and thus begins a drastic change in my daily schedule. Naturally, since all of my programs and counterparts are in the public schools, I have no real formal work at the moment. Thus, I’m going to have to get creative to stay busy.

One thing I have done so far is start to teach English classes to a couple groups of sixth-graders here in town. The project was suggested by my director from Peace Corps when she came to visit with my counterparts several weeks ago. Whereas I was worried that teaching English would pigeon-hole the perceptions of how I am able to help the community (I really don’t see it as something that will help this country by itself), I do see it as an opportunity to get to know better a group of students. I will also get a chance to see for myself what it is like to manage a classroom of Honduran students first-hand.

I had the support of my counterparts in advertising the classes and selecting a group of students. Originally the plan was to just have one section of about 20 sixth-graders (who are just about to enter High School). However, there was such a demand from both schools that I ended up agreeing to do two sections of 20, one from each of the two elementary schools. On paper I was set to go, with a list of students and a clear schedule (one hour a day for each class, five days a week, for 5 weeks).

I thought it would be a great activity to keep me busy until just about Christmas time, but things haven’t been going as well as I had hoped. Despite the apparent demand to take the classes, attendance has been the number one problem. For example, at one of my elementary schools (Escuela Francisco Morazon) a group of 24 students was selected out of a total of 80 or so students, the majority of which eagerly claimed to be interested. However, on the first day only about 15 came. I thought that would be fine enough, but each day less and less students came. I had to cancel class the other day when only three students showed up. There are some meetings at the school this week, so I plan to talk with the teachers to think of how we can improve attendance.

There have been some positives in spite of some of the difficulties, however. For example, on my first day at the Luis Portillo school, I was a little frustrated when only 5 girls of the 20 students showed up. However, I decided to make the best of the opportunity. I had a list of the entire group of 20 students, as well as a small group that happened to know where everyone lived. I decided to ask them to help me look for the rest of the class. The girls were really helpful and agreed to lead me from house to house all over town (for almost two hours in the hot sun, without complaining at all!) to remind the other students about classes the next day. I actually had fun with them, and it was also a good opportunity to introduce myself to some parents and families. Along the way I got to see some other parts of town I hadn’t seen before, including this view from a hill, which features a panoramic view of the whole downtown area of Teupa. I don’t have the best camera, but hopefully this will still give you a sense of how things look:

The trip around town was mostly a success, as the next day we had a group of about 13 or so, and a consistent group of ten for the rest of the week. The following week, however, the group dwindled down to only 5 students. Though I’d love to have a larger group, it’s not so bad to work with the group that’s the most interested and fun to work with. We did another trip around the neighborhood this week, so hopefully that will help again as time goes on.

Outside of the English classes I have no real formal work. My counterparts are telling me that it’s going to be very hard to convince parents and families to attend any kind of events during the vacation, so I’ll just have to stick it out. I plan on doing some slightly informal activities, such as playing soccer with kids in the town park. Almost every kid in town knows my name, so I’m thinking it might not be too strange if I just show up at the court and ask to play. Like I said, it’s nothing formal, but hopefully it will help me to build trust with the students and make myself more visible to the community.

Yuscaran

In other news, I finally got to meet some more Peace Corps volunteers a few weeks ago! Most of the volunteers from my department came. The departments are basically equivalent to ‘states’ back in the U.S. For perspective, the I’ve heard the country of Honduras is about the size of Tennessee, and thus I would estimate that more or less each department is more or less the size of Rhode Island.

Anyways, they had a welcome party for me in Yuscaran, a really beautiful town that’s only about 2 hours or so from Teupasenti. Yuscaran is definitely one of the most picturesque towns I have seen in this country, and as I was shown around the cobblestone streets and saw the spectacular countryside views from the mountains, I definitely felt quite jealous that I wasn’t living there. Here are some pictures:

That day as a group we hiked through the mountains a bit in search of some waterfalls. It was a nice hike (and not too tough), and along the way there were some cool sights. For example, here’s an old gold mine that we came across (I don’t remember how far it dates back to):

It was pretty creepy, but wasn’t all that deep. It maybe went in about 15 or 20 feet.

Then of course there was the waterfall. I decided to go in the water, which was quite cold:

The hike was a lot of fun, and it was cool getting to know the other volunteers along the way. On our way back we took a break on someone’s rooftop/porch, where there was perhaps the best view of all. You can literally see Nicaragua in the distance:

After all that we had a nice meal at a local comedor, which is sort of like a laid-back restaurant that feels more like eating at a neighbor’s house. We then grabbed a bit of ice cream, and loaded up on some ‘beverages’. We then spent the rest of the night consuming said ‘beverages’ and playing ‘beverage-related’ games. It was simple but a lot of fun.

I also used the time to copy a ton of movies and TV shows onto my hard drive from the other volunteers here. There’s a whole system set up where the volunteers share files, so now I have a ton of stuff to watch when I get bored. I may or may not have watched four entire seasons of How I Met Your Mother in the following two weeks.

Finally, we all slept in the house of the volunteer that lives in Yuscaran. The next day I felt surprisingly well-rested after sleeping on the hard floor with nothing but a sleeping bag in a room full of volunteers. We all took a bus home early in the morning, and a few hours later I finally made it back to Teupa.

Qué Más?

Coming up I have a decent amount of social events to keep me busy, and hopefully will help me through the dry spell of work. There’s Thanksgiving this weekend, Donkey Polo in Yuscaran December 10^th (And yes, that is playing Polo on bareback mules. Be jealous.), Christmas, New Year’s, and then finally, my birthday. It’ll be tough to spend the holidays away from my usual friends and family. However, I do have new friends and family to share it with. The plan right now is to visit my old host family in Las Cañadas for Christmas (who basically are a second family), and the rest with my new PC volunteer friends.

Once all the fun stuff has passed, I’ll only have one month to kill before the next school year starts. I have plenty of planning and preparations to take care of, so by then I should be plenty busy.

That’s all for tonight, and as usual, I miss and love you all.

-        -  Peter

In Which: Peter Does Some Work

Background Info:

I guess I’ll explain the work situation. As you know, I was in training for about two and a half months. I never really wrote about what we learned, as I was worried it might sound boring, and I had other “cooler” things that I wanted to share. To summarize, besides talking about aspects of volunteer life (such as safety, health, and development philosophy) we also learned about and practiced specific activities that we can do for work in our sites.

Essentially Peace Corps has a variety of manuals and curriculums for programs that we can use and implement in our schools and communities, depending on the needs of our various sites. One of these programs is named Colgate (it sounds cooler pronounced the Spanish way); where there is an entire curriculum we can teach in elementary schools about various topics of dental health. For this we are even supplied a plethora of free toothbrushes and toothpaste for each student in our town. Another big program is TEAM, a.k.a. “Teaching English and Methodology”. With this program there is a curriculum that not only gives English lessons, but also can be used to teach general teaching methodologies. It is designed to be given to teachers, and they are taught in a way that shows them how to conduct a lesson with their elementary school students (including games, activities, etc.). Finally, other programs we learned about include teaching HIV/AIDS awareness, leading sports teams, and activities to promote environmental education.

As I mentioned, Peace Corps gave us a wide variety of training and ideas for things we can do in our sites. Essentially we are encouraged to choose the types of activities and programs based on our own skills, interests, and the needs of the community. We have a lot of freedom in what we ultimately decide to do, but at the end of training I definitely felt confident about getting started with my work.

So what do I do here?

Before arriving in my site, Peace Corps had already worked to find Honduran counterparts for me to work with (in my case, the principals of the high school and elementary schools in my town). With these counterparts my supervisors discussed the purpose and role of a Peace Corps volunteer, explained the type of services I offered, and came up with a tentative work plan for me. I was told that Teupasenti’s main desires for my help included working with advanced students in the high school to teach them leadership skills, working to improve the student government in the elementary schools, and teaching English to the teachers through the TEAM program. Other ideas for work included conducting lessons in a parenting school, getting involved with sports teams, provide general trainings for teachers, as well as some other minor projects. There’s plenty of work to be done.

Upon arriving to my site, I found out that my directors in Peace Corps had already done a great job of choosing counterparts and explaining to them how I can help. They already had a clear idea of what I am going through (in terms of leaving home for two years), and how I can help the needs of their schools and communities. I was able to get involved a little bit here and there without much of a delay.

We were advised in training that it might take a long time for our counterparts to trust us, and we might have to simply spend a lot of time observing classes and community events before we would be able to contribute something of our own. Also, the school year ends in early November, thus we only had a month or so after getting to site to work before their summer vacation started. Whereas I still have plenty to observe and learn about, I was lucky to be given opportunities to do work that interested me almost immediately. Of course I am still trying to integrate myself more and more, and I have a lot more to learn before I can begin some bigger projects, but I feel good about how things have started so far.

Specifically, my work load for the first month or so can be summarized as follows: I met with the student government in one of the elementary schools to give lessons about leadership and plan activities with them, I have been giving TEAM lessons to groups of teachers from both elementary schools, and I also have been working to plan a community service project with the student government of the high school.

With the elementary school student government I didn’t really do much, but I learned more about how they work and have some ideas about what we can do the following year. The biggest thing I did with the students was help them organize how they would run a school-wide assembly one week, though in reality other teachers did most of the work for that. Next year I hope to involve them in larger activities, and I want it to more or less mirror the work I do with the high school group (as detailed in the next section), but on a smaller scale.

As for my TEAM classes, they were more of an informal introduction to the classes I will be teaching the lessons formally in the new school year this February. There is a whole specific process that needs to be followed in order to register teachers for the class through the government, but I decided to skip that for now to show to them I am willing to work. I will simply take care of the administrative aspects during the summer (winter?) break and start fresh the following school year. It has been a lot of fun doing the lessons, and I look forward to continuing them.

Los Presidentes

Finally, there is my project with the high school. This has been by far my most rewarding form of work thus far, and I see a lot of potential for the future concerning what I might be able to do with the group.

I wasn’t told much about what I would be doing with them at first, I was just told to teach them about ‘leadership’. I started to brainstorm informally, and I basically figured that if I wanted them to be learn about leadership, I would have to give them an opportunity or project to act as leaders. I started envisioning teaching the kids to plan and conduct their own community service projects, simultaneously learning how to be a leader and helping with problems in the community. However, I figured I would have to plan substantially with the teachers and principal about what I would specifically be doing with them. I didn’t expect to start as quickly as I did.

For my entire first week in Teupasenti, the high school was on strike. Sadly, this is an extremely common occurrence in all schools in Honduras (though it’s a different topic for a different day). When classes finally resumed, I only met with the principal to informally discuss what I would be doing. It seemed as if I was supposed to already have something concrete planned (though no one told me), so luckily I was able to at least share my informal ideas. I was then told we would meet with other teachers the following day to plan some more specifics about my work. I decided that to prepare for the meeting I would write down some official objectives for my idea, thus being able to sound a little bit more as if I knew what I was doing (though I’m not sure I really did).

So what happened the next day? Well, I showed up for the meeting, and it didn’t quite go as planned. Instead of meeting with teachers to bounce ideas off of them and get their input, I was instead thrown in front of the group of students I was to work with. They are referred to as the ‘Presidentes’, which is more or less the student government of the high school. There was one teacher with them, but she simply introduced me and told me to explain what I was going to be doing with the group.

I hadn’t shared the specifics of my project idea with anyone, so of course I had no idea what anyone would think of it. I decided that if they weren’t going to plan things with me, I would just take the opportunity to do what I wanted to do. Luckily I had written out objectives the night before, and I proceeded to share them with the students. I explained that I hoped to do a project where the students would practice and learn about the merits of volunteerism. I wanted to give them an opportunity to learn about and act as leaders. I wanted them to practice working and making decisions as a group. Finally, I wanted them to help with a problem in the community through the act of fulfilling the previous three objectives. I essentially explained that they were to choose and design their own event and activity. Perhaps they could provide positive activities for their peers by organizing a community soccer tournament. Perhaps they could lead environmental projects, such as a campaign to reduce the staggering amounts of trash littered throughout the entire town. Perhaps it would be something completely different. I wanted them to choose an activity of their own to help with the problem of their choice.

I would also like to mention that I had to explain all of that in Spanish.

The idea took. The teacher approved and the students seemed at least willing to give it a try. I actually had a bit of an adrenaline rush throughout the presentation, as the initial fear of not knowing what I was doing melted away and transformed into confidence and assuredness in the idea. I suddenly felt that I had a clear vision of what I wanted to do and how I could do it. It was a kind of ‘teacher’ moment that I had never really felt before. At least for that day I felt that I was really in the right place, and that I was the man for the job.

As fun as it was to get feel excited about the possibilities of what I could do with a willing group of volunteers, the reality remained that we hadn’t actually accomplished anything yet. I started to plan how my next meeting with the group would go. While I was preparing, I happened to find a manual about planning community service projects with other volunteers in the community; a book I didn’t realize I had with me. I ended up modifying it for my own needs here and there, but overall it gave me some good ideas.

Thus began the project. We met once a week at the high school in the afternoon for a 2-hour meeting. We began by discussing the kinds of problems the community had, such as gang violence, teenage pregnancy, pollution, and drug abuse. We voted as a group to try and do a project that would help with juvenile delinquency in the community (which incorporated many different problems). In other meetings we planned ways of helping with the issue. These included hosting a community cultural event to give youths something positive to do in their free time, hosting a soccer tournament, and organizing lessons that the group could teach to the rest of the high school. They ended up deciding to prepare ‘charlas’ (lessons/lectures) that they would give to the school. Though it might not have been the most exciting type of project, it was important to me that they chose it themselves (instead of me telling them what to do). Also it was the most practical project, as by the time we decided the type of project we would do there were only three weeks left in the school year.

There were many issues throughout the planning process, the greatest of which was punctuality. If a meeting started at 2PM, we typically got started at 2:45PM. There was no consistency in attendance, either. Half of the group would show up one week, and the other half the next. This particularly was a problem, as the work we did in each meeting naturally built on what we had done in the previous week. It was tough to constantly have to spend time bringing other people up to speed.

In the end, however, I feel like it all worked out. We picked a day to give the charlas and a schedule for the groups to reach every class. They were able to research their topics and put together a presentation just in time. I would have liked them to be prepared sooner in order for me to to help them put together a smoother lesson, but they turned out well enough. I tried to give them pointers here and there, but in the end the truth is I didn’t really teach them to plan and implement lessons. The objective of the entire project was more about them voluntarily working as a group of leaders to help with an issue in the community.

Finally, after a month of planning, came the day of the charlas. I was very excited, as there were times I worried it wouldn’t come to pass. I really wanted to complete the project in order to have something to build off of for the following year before the vacation began. Here are some pictures of the students giving their presentations:

They worked throughout the day and into the night (the school closes at 10PM) to give their presentations to almost every class in the school, each lasting roughly 30-45 minutes. They were really excited about the process, and didn’t remotely complain about having to work all day. I actually suggested that they could stop after the morning and afternoon sessions, but they all wanted to continue. They even offered to give the lectures to the sixth graders at the local elementary school the following day, but we decided it was best just to stay with the high school.

Were they the most beautiful lessons ever? No, of course not. But like I said, I didn’t teach them how to create a beautiful lesson, and that wasn’t exactly the objective. Some kids simply read from a paper, but others had all of their information memorized and enthusiastically lectured to the classes. Some even incorporated a bit of multimedia to show a video.

The topics ranged from different kinds of drugs, alcoholism, and the importance of family. Did we drastically reduce the prevalence of these issues in the community? I seriously doubt it. However, perhaps we did get some students to think about the issues. Also, I was asking around with the group during the day, and they seemed to be telling me that they don’t receive Health education that we do in the states, where we learn and talk about issues such as addiction. Overall I felt good about the project because I feel at the least the Presidentes got a chance to learn through their own research, and they were able to practice a leadership role as they got in front of their peers to share their projects.

The school year is over now, and I can begin to start thinking about the new one that is coming in February. I hope to work with a group of students during the break (perhaps planning activities that are more fun/recreational), but if that doesn’t happen then at the least I expect to work with a similar group next year. With more time I hope to tackle some bigger and more meaningful projects. There are a lot of possibilities of things we can accomplish together, but I’ll have to wait and see how it goes.

Time will tell.