Hi friends, family, etc! It’s been a while since I last blogged. Sorry about that… I’ll waste no time, let’s jump right in and try to get you caught up.
So I’ve now been
in Ecuador for four months, which seems like a really long time and at the same
time it seems like no time at all. I’ve completed
a full trimester of teaching and now I’m a few month into another
trimester. Finals week in Ecuador was
definitely an experience- just figuring out the process and how the grading
system works here was an experience in itself, but also the fact that I was
giving finals to six-eleven year olds is pretty crazy.
The
process of finals was basically three weeks long- there was one week just for
review where each student had to do a “cuestionario” for each class which was
sort of like a study guide. Then the
next week was finals week. They have
finals for every subject they take: I asked the 5th grade teacher
how many tests that meant for her students and she said fifteen. Isn’t that crazy! I can’t imagine having to take that many
tests all at once, especially at such a young age.
Now
that I understand the education system pretty well, I am getting pretty
frustrated with the way that everything works.
In a nutshell, classes tend to be just kids copying notes into their
notebooks and not very much active learning at all, parents are very involved
in their kids grades and often do their homework for them, most schools teach
English out of a book that is only in English including all the instructions
and the teachers barely speak English so I don’t know how anyone is expected to
get anything done that way- full immersion is a great idea, but you need some
sort of context to actually understand things. The focus is mostly on dictado
(basically spelling) and math and they seem to not spend a ton of time on other
things, and most of all, grades seem to be much more important to kids and
parents than actually learning, which is very annoying for me as a teacher when
my goal is to get them to learn as well as possible, and it also means that cheating on tests is very common. That being said, San Felipe, the school that
I teach at, does a relatively good job of not getting too caught up in all of
these things and trying really hard to teach as well as they can. They have a new class called “development of
thinking” this year, which I don’t know a lot about but I think it is a really
good step in the right direction. And as
far as English goes, we don’t use a book, but I make up all the curriculum on
my own and try very hard to plan activities and assignments that will help them
learn in the best way possible. The
teachers and the Madres who run the school are really great and care about the
kids a lot, so all in all I’m very proud to be a part of this school, even if
the education situation in this country is challenging.
One of the
things I do aside from teaching classes to try to help the kids learn is read
them books. Very few of them have books
in their homes and they don’t spend a ton of time on reading in school, so I
always bring a few picture books in Spanish to school every day and read to
kids during recess or at the end of the day or sometimes at the end of my
class. I definitely can’t imagine having
a childhood without books, so it’s important to me to help reading be a part of
these kids’ lives.
The week after
finals we had a whole week of vacation, which was nice because I had some time
to just spend in the neighborhood and prepare for the upcoming trimester. At the end of that week was the first Rostro retreat
of the year in Ayange. It was a three
day retreat at a retreat house near the beach for all of the Rostro volunteers
during which we got time to reflect on our time so far, to pray together, talk
as a community, and to have some time to spend just hanging out at the beach
and getting some rest. Needless to say,
it was a great weekend. It was fun to be
on the beach with the other house of volunteers and get to enjoy some food that
we don’t normally get in our communities, and the reflection and discussion was
very productive and insightful.
Here’s a picture
of us on the beach on retreat! Pictured
are all of the volunteers from both communities, our in country director Darcy,
and our retreat leader Amy.
Thanksgiving in
Ecuador was also definitely an experience.
We were able to celebrate on the night of Thanksgiving at the school
Nuevo Mundo in Guayaquil, which is a work site for some of the Rostro
Volunteers who live in Arbolito. The
woman who started the school is from the United States and always hosts all the
gringos she knows in the area. There
were about forty people total, including the other Rostro community and their
retreat group of high school students.
It was a really nice meal and we got to eat outside, which was
definitely different from Thanksgivings that I’m used to.
The following
Saturday, our community celebrated Thanksgiving again, this time at our house
with us cooking, which was interesting for those in charge of the turkey. I did the vegetables. It was a double celebration of Thanksgiving
and Ana’s birthday, and Greg’s family came over to eat with us. It was a really great night with our
Ecuadorian family and some great food.
A few weeks ago,
I started rehearsing for Christmas with a group of kids at one of the chapels
that’s part of our parish. So far we’ve
had three practices and it’s been a really cool experience for me. It’s been great to learn Christmas songs in
Spanish and be able to get ready for Christmas by working with a choir. It’s exciting for me that I get to work in
music ministry in a way other than just singing at mass- hopefully I’ll have a
few more opportunities to do things like this later in the year. I’ve been pleasantly surprised by my ability
to teach singing in Spanish- I thought it would be tricky trying to explain how
the voice works, but for the most part I think I’ve been able to get the
message across and I can tell that the kids are learning.
I
think that’s about all. I’ll leave you with a picture of me and our
two dogs, Clubber and Nala! Nala is our
new puppy- she’s about 5 months old.
