School in Guatemala.
Where do I even begin?
There are so many differences between school in Guatemala and the
US. Learning exactly
how schools work here has been one of my first and most important
challenges.
I have been working with fourteen grade schools, the grades
are K-6, but some of the children are as old as 14. The smallest school has about 70 children and the largest
school has about 400. Working in
the classrooms has been way more fun and rewarding than all those boring things
I have to do with adults.
The school day in Guatemala technically goes from
8:00am-12:30pm, but usually goes more like 8:30am – 12:00pm. Snack and recess usually take up the
whole ten o’clock hour. This
leaves about 2.5 hours each day of instruction. The doors to the school are often left open, leaving stray
dogs and small children to come and go as they please.
The teachers in the school are also the janitors,
administrators, and cooks (the children receive a snack each day); as a result,
the teacher is often not even in the classroom and young students are left to
copy things from the white board as their only method of learning.
Furthermore, student: teacher ratios are about 30:1 on a
good day. There are no aides or
reading specialists. If a child
misses a lot of school or just can’t keep up, they can repeat a grade, but
there are no IEP’s – just the hope that another year will do the trick.
Teachers rarely have more than a high school education. Many people become teachers chose their
profession simply because they do not like the other career paths offered at
their high schools. This being
said, there are some really wonderful teachers in Guatemala. I think it is especially impressive
when teachers pursue a college education, given that there is no financial
incentive to do so.
There are no libraries, computer labs, gymnasiums, or
cafeterias in any of my schools. Children
do all their learning in one classroom and all of their playing on one dirt
field (and a basketball court, if they’re lucky). This set-up obviously has some serious draw-backs, but
there are some really net things that come of it, too.
Kids of all grades interact and they interact very
nicely. Recess is typically a time
where brothers and sisters check in on one another. There is typically three or four games happening on the
field at once, which appears to me to be chaos, but everyone is happy, so I
don’t ask questions.
Children each have chores to do to keep the school running
(i.e. retrieving snack, mopping classrooms, collecting trash, etc.) and they do
them without complaining. There is
typically a fair degree of chaos inside the classroom with kids moving around
and leaving as they please, but generally when the teacher does ask them to do
something, they do it. For the
most part, kids are even respectful to me, the strange white girl who is still
learning Spanish.
Teachers are required by the government to teach English, at
least once a week.. However, the
teachers don’t know English and the result is some bizarre pronunciation of
English words: for example, pronouncing the “e” on the end of “blue” –
“Blu-EEEE”.
So, this week, I am beginning a class for teachers about
teaching English. The two hour
class will combine English lessons and discussions on teaching
methodology. I am not particularly
qualified to teach either of these things. However, my 21 years of education were all about learning to
identify a problem, find a solution, and presenting that solution. Therefore, after a quite a few hours of
research I am ready to get started.
If you, too, can think critically, please go hug a teacher!
P.S. Here are some pictures of a few of the awesome kids with whom I've been working!
