mi mama me ama

Things have been going very well down here.
Last Friday the masons finished the last floor of the houses!!! We had a celebration afterward which was a lot of fun. Spending so much time with all of the villagers has been so great and we are very comfortable with each other.

This past weekend we went on a really fantastic excursion to Lago de Yojoa and went to a waterfall and walked in and around it.

But that is not what this blog is about.

This blog is about my class (again).

Like I mentioned my class is made up of 5th and 2nd graders. The past few school days I have been working with my 5th graders, which has given my 2nd graders a lot of one on one time with their teacher. I have seen some definite improvements in those students. There is one story that sticks out in particular:

When I was working with my 2nd graders I realized two of my favorite kids who are twins didn't even know their alphabet. That about broke my heart.

During recreo the teacher and I spoke about the differences between the abilities of students in all the classes, and I mentioned how it is unfair for teachers to send kids to the next grade when they aren't ready for it because they just sit in a class unable to participate because they don't have the basics down, or the rest of the class has to go slower so that the child can be on time. I noticed that the teachers have been paying close attention to what Leila and I have been doing in our classes, and even in this conversation I could tell she was taking mental notes.
When all the students came back from break I resumed my class on "Animales Vertebrales" picking back up with telling the students all about amphibians then suddenly I am interrupted by the teacher and she calls me over to her desk. Kevin, one of the twins, was standing there with his notebook out. She showed me how pretty his letters were, but writing down letters was never the problem, it was understanding what he was writing.

Then the most amazing thing happened: He read a sentence aloud to me "mi mama me ama", and then another, and then another. Not only that he also wrote down a sentence that was dictated to him write before my eyes.

This is why we need an education center. An opportunity to have one-on-one attention for these kids and even adults is all that is needed to get this community moving in the right direction.

Today was a great day.