Getting my Maestra On

Hello / Buenas / Ñantöre! First – I must make an update to two posts back. I wrote about my host nephew coming over asking for ten cents to make a copy, and how silly I thought that was. I stand corrected because I recently learned that the students are asked to each bring in ten cents so that the teachers can print out worksheets in San Felix. This is one of the expenses authorized under the beca universal –the check that each Panamanian student collects three times a year as long as he or she receives passing grades. For elementary schoolers, the amount is $90/student, for high schoolers it’s more but I can’t remember the exact amount. The beca is used for buying school uniforms or fabric to sew uniform naguas, notebooks, pencils, backpacks, food, transportation, and any expenses requested by the teachers. There is no real tracking of how families spend the becas, so you’ll see families eating really well the week after they collect and then handfuls of kids missing the first few days of class in the new school year because they don’t have shoes, there is no money to purchase shoes, and students are not allowed in school without shoes. I see this as a huge problem, one of several in the public school system. In our elementary school teachers frequently miss days of class, and there are no substitutes. On any given day, at least one or two grades won’t have class because the teacher is not there. Sometimes the students are told in advance and sometimes they make the trek (up to an hour, uphill, for some kids in my community) just to find that the teacher didn’t show up. I could go on ranting but it’s not my place; I am a foreigner, I’m not in the profession, I don’t understand the complexities. What I do know is that there is a huge resource and quality gap in public education between wealthy and poor areas, a problem not at all unique to Panama. As a graduate of 17 years of high-quality public schools and a lifetime nerd who always loved going to class, what I can do is to encourage kids and parents to make education their priority and show them what amazing things education can do.

So today I want to write about some POSITIVE things that have been going on in the academic world here in the Comarca! First, motivation for my community English class continues to be high, so we’ve been having class often, sometimes even several a week. My students are advancing in their vocabulary and basic sentence formation and we have fun with games like charades, Pictionary, Telephone, and Simon Says.

An English class with host uncle Julio and the teachers in Cerro Mesa

Gallina's English class, including my star students Dionicio and Virginia, who may or may not be having a love affair (what have I started)

I spent a morning teaching 5^th and 6^th graders about the water cycle and watershed protection. We talked about the scarcity of potable water in the world and ways we can conserve it, how our agricultural and ranching communities pollute our streams and rivers, the importance of tree coverage in the watershed, and how we can preserve the quality of water for downstream communities. On the whiteboard I drew a map of our entire Salto Dupí watershed, and had the kids draw it too in their notebooks. This way, they have a visual to remind them that as residents of Cerro Gallina and Cerro Mesa, the highest communities on the ridgeline, we have an obligation not to throw trash and chemicals into the rivers – they will wind up in the laundry of our downhill neighbors! The 5^th grade teacher Manuel was very into the topic and invited me back the next week to plant trees around the school to protect the watershed, ohh yeah! I went and it ended up being me watching Javier, one of the best gardeners in town, plant trees haha, but it’s the idea that’s important.

This is a photo of a map of our watershed that was made by a group of McGill University students. It includes all of the named quebradas and rivers, communities, and even land usage (yellow: grazing/agriculture and green: forest). Pretty cool! This is what I based the chalkboard drawing on.

Sadly, I was too busy teaching and don’t have any photos of this day :(

Eugenio and I had a productive four days at the Project Management & Leadership (PML) conference in Coclé! It was definitely way out of his comfort zone and I think he learned a lot about forming strong groups, thinking about budgeting and time management, writing formal letters, and presenting ourselves to agencies. I enjoyed seeing my friends interact with their counterparts and picking up new facilitation ideas from our awesome Panamanian facilitators. My friend Kevin’s counterpart Mario was also into singing, so for the talent show I played the ukulele and we sang a Spanish song together (one of my favorite campfire songs, Pass It On – in Spanish Lo Debes Compartir) we had only run through it twice before the show so it was kinda rough haha but it was fun. I would LOVE to do a shorter, similar seminar in-site this coming year. I mentioned it to Eugenio and he agreed that community members could really benefit from education on some of these topics. I’m thinking of planning a one or two-day seminar for maybe this October, with Eugenio as one of my co-facilitators!

 Eugenio and I literally filling each others' tanks.

Friends in naguas at PML

And finally, Elige Tu Vida in Hato Pilón! In typical Panama fashion, a day and a half before the seminar was to start I began to develop a nasty rash on my face and woke up the morning of the first day with eyes so swollen I could hardly see. Soooo I missed the first day of the seminar to go get medicine and spend a night in David, but my friends picked up the slack. I was back the next day, and the three days I did get to facilitate went super well. We trained early 200 7^th, 9^th, and 10^th graders on goal-setting, tank-filling, STI’s, HIV prevention, sexual rights, consent, and consequences of teenage pregnancy. I loved seeing the students laugh during our socio-dramas, pay close attention when we explained anatomy and write excellent questions for the anonymous question box. And the high school counselor was so excited to have us there, she was in the classroom with us nearly the whole time for four days :) We’d like to do ETV again for the 8^th, 10^th and 12^th graders as well as for the high school in Dupí later this school year.

So overall, I’d say my various teaching roles have been the most fulfilling part of my Peace Corps service thus far. June 6th marked 365 DAYS in the country of Panama! It’s hard to believe we’ve been here an entire year. And to celebrate a year in-country (actually the dates are just a coincidence) Michelle arrived on the 6th to visit me!!! Will write about her trip in a future post. Also, some bad news…my iPhone was stolen. In brief, either it fell out of my chakra or was snatched while I was in a taxi and is now long gone. I’ve gotten a new phone number for calls and Whatsapp and updated it under the Contact Me tab above. Luckily (thanks to iCloud) I still have all my contacts and should be able to recover a lot of my stuff. So I will be a little more absent from social media for a while for this reason. Also I lost my most recent photos, including ones from the Elige Tu Vida :( Sorry everyone.

My birthday!

Week's veggie haul from the amazing veggie & fruit place in Las Lajas

Water level surveying with Walter, Roger, and Victor! (project updates coming soooooon)

Went to the beach with some of my favorite gente for an overnight trip to hunt crabs.

Let's hope my face NEVER looks like this again!!