First day at school

Today was my first day at Santa Catarina. I met Abigail at the bus stop (which technically just a place on the street where you can flag down a bus) and she and I traveled together to the school. There, I met Seno Eva, the person from common hope who is doing the most work with the school there. She is a very good teacher. Patient yet demands respect(something I"m not too sure that the classroom teachers demand). There seems to be an overall lack of classroom management or 'auto control' self control on the students part. The school where I"ll be working has 6 grades and a preschool and kindergarten. All of the teachers seem very nice and encompass much of the population (in that i mean there's an indiginous teacher, one male profe, and some that appear ladino). Today Seno Eva and I went around to all of the older clases and worked with response poems where part of the class would read stanzas A and the other would read stanzas B. One of the main objectives of Common Hope in their education promoters is to encourage reading and to make lecutra fun. While it seemed like a lot of the students were able to read, there is a lack of 'ganas' or desire to do one's best or suceed in school.


I arrived at school at 7:30am and left at 12:30pm (and was late for 1pm lunch, oops!). One part of the day that I found the most interesting was during recess/snack time. During this time it is absolute chaos. Literally, 200 screaming, running, kicking children let loose into the center courtyard which is far too small for them while the teachers hide in their classrooms or in the principal's office. It was pretty intimidating. There was a little store at the entrance of the school where the children could buy snacks like juice in a bag or cut fruit or cookies. Some kids bought things and others were too poor. What I gound to be the most interesting was that each student was provided with incaparina, a hot drink that was described to me a something that is hightly nutritious (and seemed caloric also) which was a way that the school could give at all the students at least one meal a day. It didn't taste too bad, more liek what I would imagine very watered down malt o meal. Grainy to a point but also kinda sweet.


Spanish classes are...not as I expected but not on the part of the school. The school seems very nice and is located just two blocks from my house. When I arrived the first day, I talked with my teacher for about 30min about nothing in particular, and then afterwards she asked what I wanted to work on. I asked her what kinds of errors I made in my speech, perhaps the subjunctive tense (?) but (seriously, i do not want to sound arrogant,) she said there wasn't anything wrong with it. That I already spoke spanish just fine and that she would have corrected me if there were errors. Well great. I suggested that we read together and work on my pronounciation and comprehension, but even with this i feel like i'm not gaining much. I am thinking about buyng La Casa de los Espiritus by Isabel Allende because she said it was at a higher reading level than the nonfiction book in spanish that I have. Hopefully there will be things to work on, however I think i will be lowering my time from 4 hours to something less next week.


Look, even flowers in guatemala root for the gophers!