Literacy class–April 18th observations

After spending a week and a half with my parents while they were here visiting in Guatemala, I was excited to get back to see the classes and what they are up to! Mateo’s class unfortunately was not meeting today, and Lucia did not have any students in her class. She said that sometimes Fridays are low attendance days since the students are allowed to miss one day of class per week.

But I did however have a chance to observe both Manuel and Odelia’s class today… and I actually learned quite a bit sitting in on these classes. Manuel’s class started with their math lesson today… and I was at first quite confused at what they were learning. Manuel had three little boxes drawn on the board… one on top of another. And inside the boxes he had a number of lines and then dots on top of the lines. Then he gave the lines and dots numerical values depending on which box they were in and the students had to figure out the number value of each box and then add the values of all three boxes together. Now I sat there and tried to figure out what they were doing for most of the class. I thought perhaps this is like something to do with an abacus or was maybe the way my parents learned to do math back in the day before they had calculators like I had growing up in school. Finally when the students were working on some practice problems (reinforcing the lesson they just learned), Manuel came back and asked me if I understood what they were learning… and I was like umm… no. And he explained that these were Mayan numerals… and he explained a little more about the function of these numbers for me. Well all the kids in the class just started laughing and making fun of me in Tzu’tujil because I was a teacher and didn’t know Mayan numerals. And then Manuel explained to them that we come from different cultures and that we learn different cultural things in our schools sometimes… a little cultural lesson… as well as a lesson that even though we in developed countries think we have education figured out there are things that we too need to learn.

The students also seemed to be having lots of fun with practicing the problems in their notebook and having Manuel check the problems… when a student got the answer wrong, he would go back through the problem with the student and have them figure out where they made the mistake which is great for them learning to correct their own mistakes. I see why I always here from students that math is their favorite subject in school; they get a chance to use their critical thinking skills!

In Odelia’s class, she only had 2 students today so instead of using the board and a more formal style of teaching… she sat down in between the students and worked individually with each of them in their notebooks, and had them slowly read aloud to her. This was great for each of these students to have a chance to read get one on one help… especially with sounding out words. Sometimes in a big class when the students read together, students who are not getting it can blend in and get passed by with out the teacher really knowing the level of each individual student. So I think this was a great opportunity for these two women, and Odelia has such a soft patient voice and style of teaching.

This next week I will hopefully be able to observe both Mateo and Lucia’s class and send an update of their classes with my next email!

March 27th literacy class observations

It was great to get back into the classroom to see the students and observe after having a couple weeks off–one for Semana Santa, and almost another full week for capacitaciones (trainings) for the teachers. I was able to make it too all four classes again and had a chance to see all the teachers teach at least part of a lesson. I first dropped into Mateo´s class… after having a little difficulty finding it because they switched rooms! This class is the 6th grade class which is made up of different ages of men and women with ages ranging from teenagers up through adults. Today Mateo introduced the class to fractions… they first reviewed whole numbers and practiced a bit with those numbers (which is great reinforcement) and then they moved onto fractions. Mateo did a great job of using the example of a cake (circular cakes are popular here) which he drew on the board. He then told the students that they had the task of dividing the pie into enough pieces for their family of 10 to all have an equal piece. I thought this was great because he made the problem relevant to their lives, and also gave them a number which is a little more difficult to divide evenly than say 8 pieces. Hopefully next week we will go further into how to use the fractions to help out in our daily lives.

Mateo then went on with his class to a grammar lesson. Today the class began learning about nouns… he had the class copy down the definitions of nouns and explained the difference between common and proper nouns. He also gave lots of examples of nouns that were important in the students lives, such as corn fields, machetes, pencils, chalkboards, etc.

Next I was off down the road to the adobe house with a dirt floor to observe Lucia´s class. Lucia teaches the 2nd and 3rd level classes. Today the class of 4 older women continued to practice reading and writing in their workbooks. The lesson in the workbook today focused on nutrition and health, and perhaps even more exciting than seeing the women slowly sound out the words in the workbook, was seeing their interest in the material they were reading. The students spent much of the time discussing and asking Lucia about the information in the lesson. They wanted to know all they could about how to give their children the best nutrition for the means they had, and how to care for them when they are sick. Although much of the conversation I could not understand because they were speaking in Tzu´tujil, I could understand the Spanish sections they read in the workbook and the actions Lucia made pointing to different parts of her body when the students ask questions. Even though this might have been somewhat off topic, I have learned through all my education classes I took in college, that some of the best learning takes place when a class goes off on a tangent and starts really discussing something that they are really interested to learn. So, this was all very exciting for me to see in this class.

I was able to pull myself away from this exciting discussion though and head up the street to the municipal building to observe Manuel´s class of some VERY high energy teenagers. As I entered the class it looked like a considerable smaller amount of students compared with the usually very packed and stuffy tiny room. And the students were all rather quiet working on something. Manuel soon informed me though, that this was only half of the class, the other half were those kids that were playing ball and hanging off the stairs outside. The students were taking a short test today, and so he split the class in half to give them room and to prevent wandering eyes! With the two groups together I counted 25 students! The test they were taking was a written Tzu´tujil test (Tzu´tujil seems to be much harder for the students to actually write and read than Spanish because for the students it is more a spoken language). But on the test Manuel included different forms of assessment which included translating from Spanish to Tzu´tujil, identifying drawings in Tzu´tujil, and then creating sentences in Tzu´tujil. This is great to measure how well students actually understand the material, and gives students with different strengths an opportunity to show they understand the material.

After seeing both groups work on the quiz, I headed towards my last stop at Odelia´s class. Today Odelia only had one student show up for class. Some of the women had a meeting they had to go to at their children´s school, and since her class is all older women who have families to take care of, they sometimes have things that come up that they have to tend to. But it was great to see Odelia work one on one with this student. She was so patient and encouraging with this woman. And they both would work on repeating the letter sounds over and over until she got them right. So, this was another exciting day of observing classes, and every time I go I feel like I learn more and more, and it is really fun to see the students on the streets when I am walking through town and have a chance to talk with them and build relationships.

Literacy class observations

Ok… and below are some of the observations that I send out to the people in Canada who pay for 4 literacy classes here in San Pablo. I observe the four classes once a week and write my observations and send them to the sponsors in Canada. I also am responsible for paying the teachers, getting attendance, and I think I am going to start to get to go to the teacher inservice classes! It is a great way to get to know more people in the community.

Hello everyone,

My name is Mary Micikas and I am your observer for the literacy classes in San Pablo La Laguna this year. I actually went to school to be a secondary English teacher, so this is pretty exciting for me to be observing these classes. Classes have been going for about three weeks now, and I have had a chance to observe classes two different days. The classes are held in different places throughout the pueblo… I got lost a couple times and was wandering around the streets looking for the classes, but luckily I found some very nice people who escorted me to the correct house… people here are so very helpful!

The classes are all very different, from the places where they are held, all the way to what the students are learning, and the make up of the students in the class. Lucia´s class is one of the first levels of students. The students are working on reading aloud and sounding out words. There are about 8 women in this class, and most of them speak mostly only Tzútujil (the indignous language in this pueblo). But of course they are learning Spanish in their studies! This class is held in a little adobe room with a dirt floor. Lucia has a chaulk board proped up against a table and has made a couple little benches for the women to sit on out of tires and a board. Of course many of the children came to class with the women, and some of them even sat in on the class. One girl in particular seemed so interestd, and she got out her little notebook from school and was taking notes. Other children play outside the house with other children who live nearby. They just come in occasionally to check in and see what is going on.

Odeilia´s class is very similar to this sort of a structure with the women and their children attending. One of the women even gave up her seat for me to sit on, and even though I insisted that she sit on the chair and I would take the ground, she would not have that! In Odelia´s class during the Spanish part of the lesson, we worked on the letter “L” and she had us all making all sorts of Lllll sounds with different vowels and such. It was actually pretty fun!

Manuel´s class is very different! His class is made up of mostly teenagers, and it is a pretty wild place! This class is held in the classroom of the municipalidad, but we are all smooshed in there pretty well! There is sooo much energy in the classroom, sometimes it gets a little out of control, but Manuel has a really good way of quieting them down and refocusing the class. But he also seems to have a really good rapore with his students. This class is a higher level, and they are working more on sentence structure, and the other day while I was there the class was working on math problems on the board!

Well, I am off to observe classes again today! But this is a really neat experience, and I feel like I am learning a lot about education in this country. I can`t wait to share more with you all about what I have learned!

Medical Jornada (clinic) March 12-14

Alright, so here is probably more information than anyone ever wanted to know about the medical clinic that we had here in March, but these are the notes that I wrote up to give to the other volunteers I work with and to have to help plan future medical clinics. We host medical teams of doctors, dentists, nurses and such who come down from the states or other countries to spend a week providing medical care for the people in the villages where we work. Eventually the clinic we are building will be a place where we host a medical-dental team once every month or every other month. The advantages of having an actual clinic will be that we have a place to keep records, we plan to have a nurse who works full time at the clinic who can help with meds or with follow-up care from the clinics, the doctors and dentsists will have more tools and instruments they need to provide a higher quality of care, and we will have a pharmacy where we can store medicines securely. Also we want this building to be used a lot!… a community building. I am currently working on a health needs assessment to see how we can provide the best services. Hopefully the clinic will also be used as a place where we can provide classes and such on preventative health care, hygiene, nutrition, water, natural medicines…ect. So that we can get to the cause of the illnesses and maybe prevent them instead of having to treat them. People from the community have also expressed interest in holding meetings such as AA meetings and a women´s weaving group would like to use it to meet in. So we have lots of hopes for this building to really be a community building!

Here are the notes from the clinic we had in March… there are lots of extra details…

The team arrived in Panajachel on Monday March 10th, spent the night and met up with JoAn on Tuesday morning. JoAn and the team took a private launch over to Casa Rosada, the Launchero—Andres charged 300Q for the trip, and JoAn was very pleased that he helped load and unload bags for the team. After the team arrived at Casa Rosada, they settled in claiming their bunk beds and arranging the food they brought in the kitchen. After a brief intro to Casa Rosada and a lovely demonstration of the Pila by Mary, the group had a bit of free time and then headed to San Juan for a day of fun! We took a little tour of the town such as the new market and new library and such. Then some of us went to visit Ana and Francisco and to see Ana’s weaving groups’ weavings. Though it was difficult to actually get the group to go to Ana’s house, some finally did agree to go, and they seemed to be just so happy they went. They even got samples of the different kind of natural die thread in addition to some weavings. Some people in the group went to see Juan Carlos and some had a refresco at the nice hotel and checked out the art galleries. Then we waited around for Santiago and spent much time trying to find him to place their order for coffee. I am thinking that this must be the very best coffee in the whole world… they were seriously so very worried they would not be able to find Santiago with the coffee. Well as it was nearing dark, and Mary kept telling the group we probably should catch a ride back cause it is not fun to walk on the path at dark. So finally most of us decided to go find a ride back. But not our heroes Marilee, Evie, and Riley… no they were on a mission to find that coffee for the team, even if they had to brave that curvy, robber filled dirt path in the pitch dark. Now as for the rest of the group, they are mostly all some kind of medical professionals from the states; however the 3 extra Q to take a tuk tuk back to Casa Rosada instead of searching high and low for a picop (pick-up truck) was too much of an expense. So we waited and waited for a picop to get ready to leave. They kept messing with the engine and pouring water over something, which is probably not a great sign… as the yellowy pink sunset faded into an increasingly greyer and greyer color. And then who shows up but the coffee hunters! They came running with their bags of happy all exclaiming how Santiago had come riding down the road on his bicycle with a great big smile on his face… how very happy was to see them all. Or perhaps happy to sell hundreds of pounds of coffee??? But with our group reunited and the engine cooled down from the recently added water, we were ready to head back to Casa Rosada; the picop made it and we climbed the stone steps up to the house just in the nick of time! What an adventure!

Of course upon returning home the group was “starving” not sure if they could even wait for dinner? Why are we eating so late they would ask? Hmmm ask your leaders… But luckily in walk Rosa, Nicolas, and Loida with dinner—hooray! And what a spread there was. Rosa prepared a delicious caldo de pollo (chicken soup) with carrots, potatoes, and quiskil along side, Tere brought her amazing pasta salad on the boat from Pana, and Juan brought some tortillas and cheese spread… it was quite a feast! And it was a wonderful time of fellowship and a chance to meet new friends.

After dinner we circled up for the cultural orientation. Medoh gave quite an introduction on ODIM, our programs, and how she became involved with ODIM. After this presentation, Juan Toj presented some information on culture and how to work with the indigenous people in the villages and to be culturally sensitive. Unfortunately Juan did not have that much time to present this information, so it mostly consisted of people asking questions. JoAn and I noticed many things during the clinics which we did not go over, but which were in the cultural sensitivity piece. On some of the feedback forms, there were comments that the team members would have preferred more cultural information and discussion especially from Juan, and less information about ODIM and our background. I agree that we could just hand out the brochures, give a very brief intro to what we are about and then I am sure people would have questions they could ask us at other times. Or it might be a good idea to read the group while we are presenting, if they seem interested then we could go into more depth. After the orientation we kind of divided up roles and who was going to work where and we were off to bed.

The next morning bright and early we woke up and started getting ready for the day. The group did kind of a make your own breakfast thing with granola, yogurt, fruit, mosh, juice, coffee, tea, etc. Which seemed to work well for everyone and was pretty easy. For lunches the team packed tostadas, cans of refried beans, packets of tomato sauce and chopped up onions and cucumbers and tomatoes and avocados and such. The lunch people each day spread the beans on the tostadas and set them out for people to top with what they wanted. They also brought fruit, bread, cookies, and leftover salads from dinner. These lunches were a big hit and they went over great! Some days though there was not quite enough food, so it would be a good idea to bring more than we think we need. And on the comment forms it was unanimous praise for Rosa’s dinners, they loved them! They did suggest perhaps having a fish dish for dinner one night.

The first clinic at San Pablo, was well, a little crazy! We ended up seeing 92 patients! We got started later this day, like 9:30, at the teams request… they actually wanted to start even later. And the doctors got off to kind of a slow start with some pretty sick patients. I think that perhaps we should have brought Marilee to see Gaspar at a later time after the clinic to open up some time—she spent an hour with him. It was kind of chaotic inside the clinic with people waiting and such, and Mac was not a lot of help in trying to organize this. The pharmacy was great, and there was never really any backup. And it was really great to have Jill a nurse who worked with the patients on nutrition and medication education. The team especially Marilee was really pretty mad at the end of the day on Wednesday, because they felt that their requests to have 60 patients had not been heard. We ended up leaving the clinic around 6:00 and they said that was not ok. JoAn and I both thought it was great and there were so many very sick people who got seen, but the team seemed to have a different view. They also wanted things to be very orderly, but San Pablo is just not really orderly. Timoteo at one point tried closing the door to keep the other people out especially the kids who kept running in. But Mac made him open the door back up saying that they needed to keep it open, and thus more people came in, and we had more patients! But we made lots of referrals, including many referrals which we have not had before… such as to the Hospital in Solola and the centro de salud in SP. We even ended sending one lady with a blood sugar of 481 to the clinic in San Pedro as an emergency.

The next morning we were off on the hour trip to Pasaquim. The mini bus picked us up at the public doc and we rode the twisty, curvy path through San Pablo, up to Santa Clara, and over behind Nariz and back down a bit to Pasaquim. This was a great place to have a medical jornada, as they have never had one in this aldea before! One thing we might need to think about though is that during the rainy season this road might be kind of dicey since much of it is dirt road and down a hill and such. But we had the clinic at a guy named Oscar’s house… we used a couple rooms inside the house for the two doctors and their exam rooms and the outside big front porch we used for registration, intake, vitals, pharmacy, and waiting. It seemed to me that doctors saw a lot of cases of scabies here! We ended up having 72 patients at this clinic and the team seemed to think this was a much more manageable number. The team also did a little skit/ song for the kids as they were waiting. Two of the members of the team have some clowning and acting background and they made up a cute little song about brushing your teeth, washing your hands, not drinking sodas, and such. The team also handed out lots of toothbrushes which seemed to get kind of out of hand. The kids kept coming back to ask for more toothbrushes. Perhaps in the future we should encourage the doctors to hand out the toothbrushes in the exam room, or the pharmacy with the medicine. Also, JoAn suggested unwrapping the toothbrushes first so they couldn’t go and sell them. But the clinic in Pasaquim seemed to go very smoothly, and the translators were overall very good. Francisco changed out one for the second day because he thought she wasn’t doing a very good job?

For the clinic in Pasaquim we had a shorter drive, only about half an hour—this aldea is the one closest to Santa Clara. When we arrived in Palestina, the translators had already set up the clinic with sheets and all exactly the way we had it set up the day before in Pasaquim. However, once the group arrived, they began moving everything around and completely changed the set up that our translators had worked hard all morning and the night before to set up. This is perhaps something else to add to our cultural sensitivity document, or at least something to talk with the teams about. The clinic at Palestina was quite calm and very manageable, even though Karen, the adult physician, was sick and unable to examine patients most of the day. Jill and Evie ended up examining the patients and consulting Karen when they had a problem. JoAn worked on education of patients to fill in for Jill, and Mary worked in the lab with urine and blood samples. But everything flowed smoothly despite this little problem. We had fewer patients at Palestina and actually even ended up leaving a little early. There was a small problem with the mini-bus driver and JoAn and I were a bit worried he wasn’t going to show up to pick us back up… but he came! Some of the group though had decided to begin walking back though… not quite sure where they were walking too… they did not want to wait for the mini-bus though, and they were cold because it was pretty cold this day up in Palestina. Many of the patients in Palestina wanted glasses or needed cataract surgery, and it was hard not having any place to refer them for glasses or cataract surgery. Some patients were very insistent, so we did end up referring them to the eye clinic at the Solola hospital, but we found out later that the glasses are a crazy amount of money that these people could never afford. Later we found out that there was a huge eye clinic which included free glasses and surgeries in Pana in April, and we were able to call the community contacts and let them know about this clinic. But it would be great to have this info ahead of time.

But over all the clinic was a great success, despite some of the personality conflicts and trouble with people on the team trying to be in control of everything. Marilee is going to send out all the statistics of the clinic, so we will add that info to this document.

Update!!!

Alright little shnookie… you asked for it… here are some more posts. You may be the only one who reads this… so enjoy. When mom and dad were here visiting they sounded like they didn´t even know that I had a blog! Mom said she looked at it once! So anyways here is for you….