The roosters are crowing. Clouds are suspended low over our valley as the day arrives. This is the first morning that we can see the hills around us. It has been cold, gray and foggy outside but not inside the school where the teachers' responsiveness and sweet spirits surround us with warmth and meaning.
As we entered the school last Saturday late afternoon, we were all taken with the neatness of the bulletin boards which are hung low to allow students to read the work. Teachers’ stories, poems and illustrations were hanging in careful arrangements. Yesterday, we had students lined in the halls waiting to see the dentists. As a sixth grade girl was turned to the bulletin board, reading Magdalena's poem and looking at the art work, I asked her to read it aloud for me. Her two classmates joined her in a chorus of voices. ...and Magdalena heard them and beamed. Thank you Donna and Kathy for the writing workshop in November. Thank you all for being part of the children's ability to read. When you come in the summer, you will find students' writing and art work hanging in the hallway.
In the kitchen, we no longer have a propane tank. Thank you Gary and the maintenance team for moving that outside. I was especially glad for this when the earthquake that hit Haiti swayed us as though we were in a hammock and enough to make soup slosh out of a bowl.
Our team has five components. Elaine Nordlie is launching a music program based on her years of teaching in an elementary school in Minnesota. She combines movement, music, writing...actually I think she could make music out of anything. Each teacher will be the music teacher for his/her class. This is the beginning....and they love it. They learned to read rhythm notation which will lead to reading music. They saw that patterns in music are like patterns in the math that Don Hastings had them work on with the manipulatives.
Cheryl is concentrating on the upper grades writing program with the translation assistance of Betty from Zacapa. Both translators from Gary's November maintenance/writing workshop team are on this team. Betty and Tim's experience allow Cheryl to build on the writing workshop. Also, she is working with the teachers on the letters for the PEP program. Yesterday Juan, our lab manager, took photos of 2/3 of our students.
Jim Weeks and Cheryl followed up on last year's January session on indoor air pollution, health reasons for picking up trash, and environmental reasons for recycling. It was fulfilling to hear how the teachers had followed through on that training. They had ten leaders from the community come to the school and receive a presentation on the need for community awareness on these issues. They had a quote from a radio station in Cotzal for broadcasting the radio version of Juan's Tortillas that Ernie had recorded with the teacher several years ago. It was gratifying to see that they followed through although with the politics of the community, they could not get commitment for programs.
Jim Weeks is working with the sixth grade teacher who will implement a community service project with the sixth graders. They will be in charge of collecting plastic bottles and using them to make the bins for plastic bottle collection. Domingo, our sixth grade teacher and Adrian's uncle, will report to Jim each week about the progress of this project. The teachers like this project because it is internal to the school but has a community outreach but they don't need permission from the City Fathers to implement it.
I am following through on the test writing and going over the results with Orfa, Magdalena, and Rosa of the pre-premaria test administered at the end of the 2009 year. Dr. Walter had analyzed the results and found that we had a 20% drop in the scores compared with the last two years. It was good to have the conversation with the teachers about this. They think it was the test conditions and a new test proctor, in part, although Orfa knew that some of the students had problems learning. The Ministry of Education has decreed that early grade students have to advance according to their age--not according to mastery. In the upper grades, if a student is held back, the teacher has to write a page of explanation giving the reasons.
Tim Weyland, a bilingual teacher from Denver, has been translating for Elaine in music and is working with the teachers on revisions in the tests they wrote last April. Our goal is to have the tests ready to administer by the end of the year.
Yohana Ovalle, a HELPS staff member usually assigned to stove teams, is our staff person. Although we miss Maria Jose, Yohana has been a wonderful addition to our group. She had never been on an education team and we are happy to indoctrinate her with the HELPS education program. .
A separate training is happening for traditional midwives as a follow-up on last year. Ernie is with Lois Weeks, the coordinator, and Holly Smith, a bilingual midwife from California to record the training on video. There must be nine ladies in the program. More arrive each day. Naomi, our health promoter, translates into Ixil. I listened to the session on cleaning hands before assisting in a birth. It even included a fingernail brushing demonstration with surgeon-like scrubbing of the hands. The ladies practiced. And they will leave the training with a backpack of things they need, including their own fingernail brush.
Kjell Nordlie, from Norway, is a great team player. He has changed all the light fixtures from fluorescent to incandescent with the help of the most wonderful driver, Hugo, who helps cook, clean-up, and do anything he sees that needs to be done. We had to change the light fixtures because of the low electricity in the evening which was burning out the ballast/starter. They removed the light fixture panels and attached the bulb sockets to a panel in the ceiling. It looks great. The fifth grade classroom upstairs had no electric light nor did Rosa's office because of damage to the fluorescent system. Now they do. Kjell is also doing an inventory of the assets in the school.
Ernie is covering the midwife training...and catching snippets of the other trainings which we will use in a future school video. Like superman, he is every where-- creative, involved, and caring.
Tonight we have the scholarship send-off dinner. Eighteen SA graduates are in our scholarship program. Some, such as Sebastian Gomez, who is studying in a pre-university program at the University of del Valle, Sololá, have already started classes. The new Colegio Utatlan students, their parents, and Rosa will ride with us on Friday to Quiche to enroll. And we will stop at del Valle to see Sebastian and find out his tuition costs for this year.
HELPS Medical/Dental team visited the Santa Avelina School. They put a protective sealant on the children's permanent teeth three years ago and were keeping records of the results of the sealants. The dentists were ecstatic about the health of those children's teeth. The six-year-olds entering the school had much more decay than the older students. Our oral hygiene program in the school is also helping. The dentists compared our students' teeth with what they seeing in Nebaj. No comparison. At the end of the day, all our female teachers were in the room because Felipa was getting her teeth cleaned and Manuela was having an extraction. The dentists used that time for a great teaching moment. They even had the teachers brush the dentist's teeth. He coached our teachers as they were doing it. "Harder--angle the brush." He asked them to brush the students' teeth to show how thorough the brushing needs to be.
The dental team and the HELPS medical clinic outreach at the health post in town is a good example of the integrated approach of HELPS work in the villages. Education alone won't do it. It takes health through medical training and community training--products like the Onil stove that helps families be healthy and economic development. We are proud to be part of the HELPS community movement in rural Guatemala.
Colleen Hager who started our school library sent more beautiful books for the library. On opening day, each of us read silently from these new books for 5 minutes. It was fun to see the teachers keep reading as various ones of us reported. They were engrossed.
Jim Barta has a grant to start social studies cross cultural exchange between SA fourth grade and a fourth grade in Logan, Utah. That is being kicked off this week.
Local news: Nicolas took another position. Maria Zaida has moved into fourth grade. She will do a great job. Ana, in preschool, is out on maternity leave. Orfa is three months pregnant. Rosa will be hiring two certified primary teachers for the preschool program.
We have thirteen students in our fifth grade this year because the government paid families in some way. Rosa thought that affected the enrollment in that class. We have 126 students in our primary school. We have a new SA Fifth Grade Field Trip to Xela Video for everyone. If you would like a copy of this fun 5-minute video let me know. It might be on our website now too. Loydell already has grant money to implement the 2010 Field triip and has the grant application in with Delta Kappa Gamma for 2011.
Adrian made a special trip to the school to thank me, on your behalf, for all the wonderful training you gave him. He said that the government school in SA where he teaches is not anything like the William M. Botnan School. No books. The children don't read much Ixil. He will have 35 kids in his sixth grade class. He uses the ideas he learned in the in-services where he can. And he added that he carries this school and the experiences you gave him in his heart always. Rosa added that Eliseo had expressed to her the same sentiments.
All this coincided with the first fair week ever in SA. Princesses crowned, football games on the field beside us, loud announcements, masked dancers to loud music performed by a real band in the back of one truck, amplified by huge speakers in another truck. Nothing has been normal about the week yet the reasons we are here continue. The kids are beautiful. The teachers care. The children are learning. The graduates want to study. We find meaning in the relationships. We touch the heart of God.
"The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet.". (Frederick Beuchner, Beyond Words: Daily Readings in the ABC's of Faith).
Helps International
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