Last Weeks in the Primaria and Explaining MEDUCA

Continuing off of my English Week post – I spent the next couple of weeks tying up loose ends and cleaning up the school after the English Week celebrations. I also was trying to set some goals to accomplish before my time at the primary school came to an end. My main goal was to help the teachers implement phonics. In order to explain why I thought this was important, let me explain a little bit about the English teaching and educational system here in Panama.

The Ministry of Education (MEDUCA) hires people to be English teachers who have studied English in college – this means that most of the time the English teachers have not actually studied teaching and that speaking English (at least on paper) is one of the only requirements. This results in having some great teachers that are completely dedicated to their students and will go above and beyond to be the best teacher they can be. But also, on the flip side, there are also a good number of teachers who don’t know much about teaching techniques and aren’t very motivated to improve. They care about their students, of course, but they just view their job as an 8-3 (or, as it may be here, 7-1) job and they aren’t willing to do much outside of that. Of course, these are generalizations and there are teachers all over the spectrum, but that gives you an idea of the source of some of the issues in the schools here.

In order to help their teachers improve their methodology, MEDUCA provides a week-long summer seminar (during their summer – January) and other workshop opportunities throughout the year. By attending these seminars and workshops, the teachers earn MEDUCA points. With these points they can apply for better jobs within MEDUCA. I don’t quite understand this system for one main reason – while the couple of seminars that I have attended have been useful information and well presented, the teachers don’t always implement what they learn, implying that they aren’t actually changing or improving their methodologies, so the points don’t actually correspond to whether or not they are good teachers (for example, one of the best teachers that I work with is only a second year teacher, and one of the worst has years of teaching experience, is a permanent teacher, and can’t speak English very well).

The result of this system is that students are graduating high school after having English for 12 years and are not able to speak or understand the language. This is why MEDUCA invited Peace Corps volunteers to work alongside their teachers so that we could bring some fresh ideas into the system.

So… one long explanation later – I decided that one of the things that I might be able to successfully implement with my four primary school teachers was teaching phonics. They weren’t teaching phonics, and a lot of the way that they are used to teaching pronunciation is to write letters that, when said with a Spanish pronunciation, will sound like the English word. While this can be helpful at times, over using it will teach the students only the Spanish-pronunciation word, not the actual English word.

I wanted to show my teachers that if they start teaching the pronunciation of English letters and words from a  young age, the students will have a much better accent and be able to sound out words instead of always looking to the teacher when they encounter a word that they don’t recognize as a sight-word (word that they’ve just memorized). Granted, phonics won’t be as effective for ESL or EFL students as they are with native speakers because the ESL/EFL students won’t have encountered as many words in conversation, but it can still be an extremely useful tool for pronunciation and word recognition.

In the couple of weeks I had left at the primary school after English Week, I tried to plan with each of them to implement some phonics lessons. I even gave them suggestions as to what letters/sounds to teach with each of their lessons for the trimester and went to each one of their classes and gave a sample lesson with phonics. This had mixed results because I ended up trying to do it all in the last week I was there. Of the days that I actually taught, one of the teachers had something else planned that day, so I didn’t actually get to show him the lesson, another teacher had a prior commitment, so I ended up teaching half of his classes without him there, and half of the other students were too young to really start teaching phonics (I decided to start doing this is 2^nd grade). So, it didn’t go as smoothly as I hoped, but hopefully with continued encouragement from me, they might end up working it into some of their lesson plans.

After that last week, I was kind of sad to have to leave the lower school because I felt like I was finally truly getting into the rhythm of things there and figuring out how I could be of the most help. But, then it was time to switch to the high school. But first – my parents came and I had two weeks of training. Descriptions of those to come in the next couple of posts!

I'll leave you with a few pictures from English Week:

A group of 6th grade students performing The 3 Little Pigs (plus 2 of the teachers assisting)

 The lovely English teachers with me after pulling off English Week!

 

The students (one from each grade) that participated in the Monday Meeting.

 

 

The 9th grade boy who I found wearing a Vanderbilt Commons shirt!! SMALL world!

My House!

Finally, here’s the update about my new house! It’s really more like an apartment, but it’s been wonderful having my own place and being able to cook and everything. Here are some photos:

My front porch:

 

My living room (I’m hoping to get a table muy pronto):

My bedroom:

Hallway:

 

My kitchen:

My bathroom:

The three things that have been the besr about living alone have been being able to eat what I want, when I want, being able to unpack my things (I’ve been living out of my bags for 6 months now… it gets old fast), and getting to decorate! I finally put up photos last weekend, which made me so happy, and made it feel like my place. 

Since my last post I have finished up working in the primary school, which included two days of celebration for the kind and queen of pre-school and kindergarten (it was incredible how big of a deal this was.... I was blown away) as well as a field day for the Día del Niño (Day of the Child). 

Here are some photos of the celebrations recently:

Me dressed up as a typical person from Los Santos (province)

 Me with the Reyna of Pre-school

 the Reyna and Rey on their float (back of a pick-up)

 me with a couple of my 3rd grade students (I think) on the Día del Niño

Then on  Saturday my parents got to town! It's been a great vacation so far and we have a few more days to go. I'll update with some great photos over the course of the next couple of weeks.

English Week

So just about every waking moment for the past two weeks has been devoted to preparing for the MEDUCA-dictated English Week. I’m pretty lucky because the teachers at my school got really into it.

Every Monday there is the weekly school meeting called the Civic Act/National Hymn where they say the Lord’s Prayer, Hail Mary, the Pledge to the Flag and the Student’s Promise. They did all of this in English for English Week! Each one was led by a student – one student from each of the grades participated. The pre-school and kindergarten students hoisted the flag, the first grade student said the Oath to the National Flag, the second grade student said the Student’s Promise, the third grade student (my former host nephew – Roderik) said Hail Mary, the fourth grade student said the Lord’s Prayer, the fifth grade student read the program, and the sixth grade student read a short speech about the importance of English.

Afterwards, we gave all of the students certificates (that I made and printed, that was a formatting ordeal with the tienda that prints things that took an hour…) and I baked the Funfetti cupcakes that Mom sent me for my birthday and gave one to each of the students as well as the English teachers and a couple of others.

Then on Wednesday we had contests for each of the grades. The teachers had competitions in each of their classrooms to  choose one per class who would compete against the others in their grade. For these students, I also printed certificates and Eliseo, Rafael and I went to Santiago to get small gifts for each student. The contests were everything from reading a story, to picture identification, to reciting a poem, to a spelling bee.

Then Friday came the main event -  Talent Show! It was definitely stressful to prepare for, but the kids loved it. I have a whole new respect for those teachers and camp counselors who try to organize kids’ performances. Each grade ended up doing a different performance from songs like 5 Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed, to plays like The Three Little Pigs, to modeling and dancing. I put together a slide show that had the words to all of the plays or songs as well as translations into Spanish so the other teachers could understand more.

The last act – the 6^th graders – did a dance to the song “Follow the Leader” that I helped them put together. All of the other students loved it – I think it was the favorite act of the show!

I was happy to help out and put all of this together, but since I have a computer, speak English natively, and am a girl, a lot of the things fell to me like the powerpoint, the certificates, putting the gifts together, teaching the dance, making the houses for the Three Little Pigs, etc. So it was a very stressful couple of weeks.

One of the things that has started bothering me especially because I’ve been stressed is because of the primary school kids, when they want to say hi to me (which is every time they see me, no matter how many times in a day) they just say my name “Savannah! Savannah! Savannah!”. Normally it makes me smile, but the past couple of weeks since I’ve been kind of stressed, it sounds to me like it’s someone wanting my attention or wanting something from me. So when I was running around like a chicken with my head cut off this morning trying to get everything together at the last minute, having the kids calling my name every 5 seconds was more than I could handle.

My primary goal over the next week: teach the students to say “Hello, Savannah” instead of just calling out my name in order to greet me.

I’m also going to try to implement phonics with my primary school teachers over the course of the next 2 weeks that I’m with them. I’m worrying already about changing over to the colegio in August, but I guess it has to happen. I just wish there were two volunteers here so that I wouldn’t feel stretched so thin. But I’m lucky that I enjoy working with so many of my teachers and that I’ve had a warm welcome here. There are definitely worse feelings for a PCV!

But for the exciting news – my parents are coming to visit! They’ll be here for a week, and then I go to In-Service Training, which will be great to see the rest of the PCVs in my group. So July will be a good, if busy, month with all of the traveling I’ll be doing.

I'll upload photos soon of the kid in the Vandy shirt, English Week performances, and my house! I'm at the mall right now and I need to go buy some groceries and head back to site - I spent the night at my friend Miranda's last night for her birthday - there were 9 of us together, which was a lot of fun. Now back to work! And my PC TE boss, Joel, is coming to visit on Tuesday, so it'll be an official week. Busy busy busy as usual. 

Love and miss you all - I hope everyone has a very happy 4th of July!

Sav

The Month of June

6/26/12 

Hello friends –

I’m sorry that it’s been a while since I updated. I guess between getting settled here and how busy things have been, I haven’t gotten around to it. But here’s what’s been happening the last few weeks:

I finished out the first trimester at the primary school, working with the 4 teachers there. Then we had a week-long break between trimesters. The first weekend I just chilled here in Pesé, but then on Monday I ventured to the province of Coclé to go to the beach – Santa Clara. It was really great – I ended up seeing 13 other volunteers from my group as well as a handful of older volunteers. We camped on the beach under these little ranchitos, which was a fun experience – chilling on the beach all day and night was great. Though, I have to say, sand is not nearly as comfortable to sleep on as I imagined it to be. But we had a great, relaxed time. We also found 2 AMAZING restaurants right off of the InterAmericana near the beach. One was a nice Spanish restaurant that I hope to take my parents to and the other was basically an American sports bar owned by this couple who is stuck in the 70’s (the probably 60-year-old husband had a mullet that was down to his waist…) – but they served the most delicious burgers… It felt like we were back in the States for a bit. Overall I relaxed, got some sun, some Frisbee time, and a lot of time with good PCV friends! Most people left on Thursday, but I was talked into staying until Friday when I finally made the trek back to Pesé.

On Saturday I woke up kind of in a funk – I think it was because I felt like I had just left all of my friends who are here in Panama and I don’t feel quite that close to people in my site. But later that day I ended up meeting up with Steve and Heather in Chitre and shopping for kitchen appliances, then I spent the nigh at Miranda’s house in Parita with 5 other volunteers (and an Australian friend of a PCV – the first person from Australia I have ever met!) as a housewarming party. It was a lot of fun to see them too – one of which I hadn’t seen since training and I missed her a ton!

Sunday was a blur because I was pretty tired, but then when I got to school on Monday I realized how silly I was being on Saturday – I was actually really happy to be back at school. I’m feeling really connected to one of the English teachers in particular, and a few of the other teachers and staff are really nice and always make me laugh. One of these is the science teacher, Celson. He is always cracking jokes and making me laugh. Put him with the woman who cooks and takes care of the cafeteria, Kathia, and you can’t stop laughing, or singing typical Panamanian music. Then there’s Señora Maribel who sits in the library, makes copies for the students, and opens the school in the morning – she’s as sweet as can be and is good company when I’m working in the library or waiting for the English teachers. Lastly, there’s Maria, one of the cleaning staff, who I have gotten to know through working with her to learn a song for the English Week Talent Show. So long story short, I’ve been feeling more and more connected at school, which has been great.

So that brings us back from the trimester break. Since then, I haven’t really gone to any classes. The first week back I was helping the teachers make their trimester plans. This was a bit of a process, but ended up being decently good work, especially with one of the teachers. Since then, I’ve also been working on a plan for each of the teachers to implement teaching phonics with each of their units. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to work with them to implement it yet because of English Week work, but hopefully that will happen soon.

As referred to above, this week is English Week, which means that last week was SUPER hectic and stressful trying to get everything prepared and a lot of it fell to me. I’ll give a detailed post about the preparations and events this coming weekend once it is all over and I can give a recap.

In addition to working and traveling, I’ve also been involved with/attended several community events such as a Bingo afternoon – I helped cook (aka fry) fish, ojaldra (the panamanian version of a salty funnel cake), and plantains – a basketball-court-soccer tournament, some normal soccer games, and a church choir competition at the school one night (4 choirs were competing to go to the regional competition – they ended up leaving it to chance, though I think the winners actually were the ones who deserved to go).

Lastly, I moved into my new house!!! I was super excited. I will also have a post devoted to this very soon, because that comes with some stories as well, and I think this post is long enough for now!

More to come soon. I promise not to leave you hanging so long this time!

Besos de Panamá,

Savannah

P.S. If I didn’t already know that this world is tiny, it was proved a million times over for me today. I was sitting in the park using the internet for a few minutes (sorry I didn’t get to post my blog) and this family starts unloading some things out of a truck in front of their house right in front of me. At first I just glance up, but I immediately do a double-take. The 9^th grade son who is helping move things out of the truck is wearing a yellow t-shirt that has a V on it… wait… it says Hank Ingram… oh my gosh he’s wearing a Hank Ingram Vanderbilt Commons shirt. It was absolutely crazy. That I happened to see him today, this afternoon, and that the shirt made its way from a printer in Nashville, to a freshman student, donated somewhere, then to Panama, then to my small town in Herrera. What are the odds of all of that happening so that I would see it? Absolutely crazy. (I'll add a photo soon!) Needless to say, it definitely made me nostalgic for Vandy!

The Day I Discovered Why I'm Here

Today I discovered why I am here.

I know that God put me here in Panama, in Pesé, in the schools I’m working in, and living with the host family I'm with for a reason. Probably many reasons – some concerning myself, and some concerning others. Some of these reasons I’m sure I’ll never know. Many I’ll uncover through lessons that I will learn and things that I will discover about myself. And, hopefully, I’ll be able to see some of those reasons regarding how my presence here affects others.

Recently I’ve been struggling a little bit with this last part - why I am here, what I am doing, and if I am making (or going to make) an impact. As many of you know, I have a strong interest in community development, which is a big part of why I joined the Peace Corps. While community development, of course, includes education, my life goal has never been to be a teacher. I would love to work on a more holistic level, or perhaps focus more on small business or microeconomics (also, for those of you who know, that’s not necessarily my background… so we’ll see where I end up). But being placed in a large town (for a PCV that is) and in two large schools with students from pre-school through 12^th grade has limited my chances to do projects outside of the schools, and I’ve been struggling some with that fact.

On the other hand, I am lucky that I have so many teachers that want to work with me, that I have had a warm welcome, that I have already made a little bit of progress with at least one of the teachers, and that I am (for the most part) enjoying my work. But sometimes I still doubt what kind of impact I really am making and I wish that I were also able to be able to devote some time to work outside of the schools instead of coming home tired and still having to prepare for the next day. Additionally, the past week or so I’ve realized that I’ve been holing myself up in my room some because of this – I feel tired, I don’t want to make much of an effort to walk around and talk to people in Spanish, and I’ve been stressed about school.

So that brings us to today.

It was already a relaxed day because it was the last day of school for the first trimester. That means that only about half of the students were at school, and those that were there were having parties in their classrooms. The teachers were just hanging around: eating food given to us by the students and talking in the cafeteria. This evolved into some dancing and tamborito – a traditional Panamanian form of singing with a couple of drums keeping the beat. So I was having a good time, just relaxing. Then after school about 12 of the teachers and I went into Chitre to have a nice, celebratory lunch, which was great to socialize and bond with the other teachers. I felt a real cohesion among the teachers, which was wonderful. Then I came home and just got to relax for the afternoon.

Somewhere in there is when I realized why I am here. I don’t want to give details about when, where, or who in case someone in Pesé comes across this – so we’ll call her Ana. I have gotten to know Ana a little bit over the past few weeks, but our relationship was still pretty professional. One day last week, I could tell she was really upset, so I gave her a note saying ‘I don’t know what’s wrong, but I’m here if you want to talk’. She didn’t, so I just gave her a hug and went about my day.

Then today we were alone and working on something and we got to talking. She ended up telling me things about her life that she said she has only told one other person – her doctor.

Ana has had a tough life. Physical (and probably emotional) abuse when she was very young, betrayal by her mother, father, and ex-husband (of varying degrees and situations), and now she has two young children and is in a stressful living situation. She has a job, but is afraid that it might not be permanent, so she feels trapped where she is living since she needs to give her children some stability. To top it all off, Ana has never had a friend to whom she can tell any of this.

But she told me.

As I was explaining above – the knowledge that I am doing some good doesn’t necessarily mean that I feel it in my heart, which is why I’ve struggled some with my assignment. This is similar to my knowledge that I have certain skills and talents: that sometimes I feel like I’m just scraping by and I’m not actually that talented or smart (whether it is true or not). One thing I do like to think that I am kind of good at is being a friend. Of course, I make mistakes. I have hurt people and let people down. But I really try my best to be there for people, no matter what it takes.

This is why I am here: to be a friend to Ana.

I have been incredibly blessed in my life with 5 girls from my high school that I consider my best friends, my neighbor who I consider my sister, the best college roommate I could have asked for, and a number of other people from college who I immensely value as close friends - and that's just the start. These people are the most important people in my life aside from my parents. The amazing experiences I’ve had would not have been the same without them. The times I have laughed so hard that I cried would not have been the same without them. The times I’ve cried so hard I couldn’t breath, I wouldn’t have gotten through without them.

And to think – Ana never had this. This is where I come in. I think this is why God placed me here.

Ana has just recently sought medical help to deal with all of her emotional scars that these events have given her, and her primary doctor referred her to a psychiatrist, so she is going to have to go and tell her whole story to someone – a stranger. I have never been a big fan of psychiatrists or psychologists personally, but I whole-heartedly support people going to them. Their professional counseling has significantly helped many people in my life. When Ana told me this, and that she was scared because I’m only the second person that she has told any of this to, my heart went out to her. I offered to go with her. Before she responded, and before I could even finish getting out my offer in my broken Spanish, I was already wondering whether I should have offered at all. I thought either she would grab hold of my offer or start to pull away because she didn’t want to get that close. She grabbed hold.

She said yes, she’s terrified to go talk to someone, but knows she needs to get some help. And that it would help if I came. I’m going to have to do some talking to PC because I think her appointment is during a meeting that I have. But I feel sick thinking about letting her down and not going. Everyone in her life has betrayed her. I am not going to if I can do anything in my power to avoid it. She needs a true friend and I think I can be that. True, I will probably only be here for two years. But that doesn’t mean that I can’t be there for her while I am here or that I can’t keep in touch later on. And I know I’m not going to “fix” her life or her emotional issues. But I hope that I can be someone in her life who doesn’t betray her, who is actually there for her and can love on her; To be someone who gives her some joy and trust in humanity again, and to make her feel that she is not alone.

All I can do is pray that God will give me the wisdom and strength to be what she needs and to help me pour into her. I have enough people pouring into me, and all I want to do is give her that same support.  I can imagine some people think I’m getting in over my head (Mom, I’m talking to you), but I can’t imagine doing anything but being there for Ana and being her friend as far as I can be. I really believe that this is (part of) why God led me here and I pray that He continues to lead me down the path he intends for me. While this doesn't change my feelings towards the actual work I'm doing, it makes me realize that I'm here for a bigger purpose and that all good things come with time. 

I promise I’ll give some updates about teaching over the next week, since we don’t have school, but I had to share this for today. I hope everyone has a good weekend!