This week, I had the wonderful opportunity to catch up with an old friend, Becca, and begin a conversation about her experience teaching in Huehue, Guatemala. She has spent the last year teaching at an orphanage and bilingual school called Colegio Bilingue Esperanza. The school has three parts; the orphanage, the school, and a home for teenage girls who come from violent backgrounds, a number of which have infants of their own as a result of sexual violence they have experienced. She said that while her formal role is preschool and kindergarten teacher, she spends a lot of time at the orphanage and girls' home "building relationships, tutoring, doing activities, playing, hugging,
laughing, mentoring, tying shoes, putting on bandaids, sitting through
tantrums, picking out lice, trying to teach social norms because parents
aren't there to do that, and worshipping Jesus" (Becca, personal communication, November, 14, 2015). In the classroom, the children spend half the day with their Guatemalan teacher, and half the day with their American teacher. The American teachers, like Becca, teach English, Art, Bible, and Service Learning.
Poverty is truly one of the biggest factors in her teaching experience in Guatemala. The school is about 90% students from the orphanage and girls' home, and 10% students from the community. Even though it is an elementary school, she described, they have many teenagers that attend their school. Because of the intense poverty in Guatemala, many children do not have the opportunity to start school at the traditional age. In Guatemala, not matter what age you start school, you start in the first grade. This means that it is not uncommon for the first grade class at her school to be a mixed age group with children as old as twelve, as well as the more traditional six. Becca said that one of the major challenges in teaching at the Colegio Bilingue Esperanza as a result of the extreme poverty, violence, and abandonment that these children have experienced is behavior management. Many of the children at the school lack parental support at home, helping with homework or teaching appropriate behavior and social norms. Another challenge Becca highlighted was connecting with the few parents of the children that are from the community. Because she teaches her students in English, she struggles with sending work or activities home because the children's parents won't understand the language. She wants to think creatively about how to work with these parents next year. If anyone has any suggestions, I would love to share them with her!
I had a wonderful experience hearing about Becca's experience teaching in Guatemala and cannot wait to share more with you.
Amy
I love reading about your friend and her experiences. What a wonderful opportunity! I can see how behavior issues would be a struggle. We struggle with those here when there isn't a lot of support from home. Can you imagine 90% of our children in our classes not having parents? That would certainly be a HUGE challenge. Thanks for sharing. Your friend's information is truly interesting and gives us an inside look into early childhood education in other countries.
ReplyDeleteAmy this post is important on various levels. First, it encompasses cultural and linguistic diversity. On top of that you have chaos--poverty, abandonment, violence, teen motherhood--and a teacher operating in the many roles that come with teaching--social worker, mental health, liaison, advocate, mentor and the list goes on. The behavior issues most likely stem from instability in just the day to day living--lack of family support, food insecurities, homelessness. WOW! It has to be challenging to teach children a second language on top of lessons about a benevolent God with efforts on serving others when you need services yourself. Much respect for Becca and others like her to seek to do this work.
ReplyDeleteAmy,
ReplyDeleteHow fortunate to have a personal contact that can give you and us a genuine look at the work teachers are doing in other countries. It was very enlightening to hear first hand accounts on how schools are run and the heart breaking situations these children have to live. Did Becca have any suggestions on how we can get involved in her work?
Shanon
There are absolutely ways you can get involved if you are interested. The biggest way would probably be to either sponsor a child, donate to the organization, or sign up to receive their newsletter. You can do all of these things at their website, http://morethancompassion.org/.
DeleteOr, you could contribute to Becca's fundraising to be able to continue to teach in Guatemala. As you can imagine, most of the teachers at the school are young graduates from the United States basically volunteering for a year to teach. Becca and her husband are committed to staying long term and need help financially to cover basic expenses in order to stay. I linked her fundraising page above.