¡Donde hay trabajo!

A class of second graders with their coloring book "Juan Bota Todo" read more below.

A class of seventh graders after a charla on "El Efecto Invernadero y Cambio Climatico" (The Green House Effect and Climate Change)... ya pretty heavy stuff considering my spanish, but it went alright. By the way... I did not try to talk about chlorofluorocarbons (which is written on the corner of the board). That was the profe's two cents. I tried to keep it a little simpler than that.

A class of second graders with their coloring book "Juan Bota Todo" about a mean old man who throws all of his garbage into the street and stream. The kids were actually pretty excited to get their own books. We read the book out loud together and talked about what you should and shouldn't do with the trash. I'm going to check back with the kids next week to check their coloring.

Yay...I am finally working! I feel like the biggest slacker saying I´m just getting started working now. But it isn´t entirely my fault it took me so long to get started. First off, PC tells us that we are´nt really expected to do much but settle in and integrate the first three months in site. And my boss, the program director of Natural Resources/Environmental Ed., had told me to hold off going into the schools and having charlas and whatnot until winter vacation was over. Winter vacations ended late July then I had Project Meeting and IST and was away from my site for nearly two weeks. But during my first three months I did have plenty of meetings with directors and teachers trying to plan future activities. Man... that was a trying experience! I have already explained some of my frustrations with that process previously. Since then I have learned that I need to bring in actual materials to show the teachers. Talking generally about what I would like to do, being really flexible and hoping the teachers would have suggestions or ideas of their own doesn´t work. Even explaining that I have this really lindo story ¨El Lorax¨ and I want to read it to the kids and do some activities and talk about the environmental theme doesn´t really get them too excited, but as soon as I brought in a cheap photocopy of the story they´re like ohhh....ahhh.... all the kids should have a copy of this! It sounds pretty simple and now I´m like duh... why didn´t I just do that in the first place, but hey no one told me these things!

A few of my housemates are teachers and they were telling me that the school district provides virtually no materials for the schools. The kids have to pay for their textbooks to be photocopied. The school district provides chalk... nada mas. They were asking me what the schools we´re like in the states and I almost felt guilty explaining that all textbooks are provided by the school district and there´s usually plenty of other materials available. I didn´t mention anything about computer labs, chemistry equipment... and everything else we have. I tried to ¨justify¨ having all these things buy saying ¨ We´ll...we pay a lot of taxes¨ like that´s a valid reason why we have all this stuff and they don´t. It always makes me sort of uncomfortable when people start to ask how things are in the states... especially when they are clearly a lot better. I always downplay everything because well... it´s hard to explain...there´s always the guilt thing and I guess I don´t want everyone to think that all Americans are spoiled brats... even though generally speaking we are. Anyways, I told them I felt really bad about the lack of materials available in the schools and now I´m going to try and make getting more educational materials one of my top priorities.