Nica Schools

One of the things that Peace Corps encourages/requires us to do as Health Educators is work in the schools. Essentially we are “guest speakers” that come and give a half-hour or hour long class on a health related topic. During training each of us is required to give one talk to a classroom, but during our service it is optional but encouraged to do it on a regular basis.

The schools here have many similarities and many differences than schools in the U.S. The primary school has a “pre-school” that is preschool/kindergarten. Then they have grades 1-6. Each grade only has one classroom, so each grade has about 45 students for one teacher (at least that’s how it is in Santa Teresa, I would imagine it depends on how many kids there are in town). The way class usually works is that each kid has a notebook and the teacher lectures and the class copies the notes into their notebook. The students don’t have workbooks, textbooks or anything like that. Usually the teacher has a teacher edition textbook that she lectures from, but not for all subjects. Needless to say, with 45 kids and no resources, the classes are a lot less interactive and creative than many classes in the U.S.

As a result, when some whitey American approaches the teacher and says I want to teach your class for 45 minutes, the teacher is more than willing and the kids generally love it. It’s a change of pace for the kids, which I think they need. Peace Corps has taught us a lot of effective games/activities that we can play with school children and has taught us the importance of many visual aids. So usually us Peace Corps people go into a class with a bunch of posters made up and games to play. Generally the kids have fun no matter what, but sometimes it’s questionable how much they are actually learning. Sometimes the kids only focus on the game aspect and not the content of the game, and some important content aspects get lost in our mispronunciation of words. But that is why this is training...we are still learning how to do things effectively. But the kids always learn at least a couple of things

So the four trainees in Santa Teresa, we each picked a grade that we wanted to give class to. I picked the 6th grade because I figured I could give a more interesting health related talk to sixth graders rather than 3rd graders. The other three trainees picked 3rd grade, 4th grade and 5th grade. I asked my class beforehand what they wanted to receive a class on, and they said HIV, so I was more than happy. The other trainees chose their own topics: nutrition, importance of hand washing, and sexually transmitted diseases (the 5th grade teacher suggested this topic).

After observing my fellow trainees give their talks and doing my own I have decided a few things. First off, kids are really fun to work with. However, you have to pick the right class. One of my fellow trainees gave a talk where there were kids running around the room, shouting things out, talking between themselves and other various VERY annoying things. She was so frustrated at the end of this talk, but we all decided that it was a lack of discipline from the teacher, nothing that she did. I will always remember to pick well behaved classrooms instead of the super wild ones. With 45 students, it is almost impossible to regain control once you have lost it (especially without the help of the teacher).

I gave my HIV class to a group of 6th graders that had a disciplinarian teacher. These kids behaved nearly perfect. I was shocked. I was expecting that me saying words like semen, sex, and condom would be too much for them. But they all sat there attentively listening. I’d like to think that they acted this way because I gave them a chat about being mature when talking about topics like this, but I know it was really because they were super afraid of their teacher (she was pretty tough, even I was a little afraid of her!).

Anyways, I think working in the schools was fun, but I was quite glad to be able to leave after an hour. I wouldn’t want to be stuck there all day with the kids (no offense all the teachers I know, new respect!). Its kind of like, wanting a nephew but not wanting my own kids yet.

Anyways, that’s pretty much the bulk of what I did this week, prepare and give that class. This Friday we are going to meet our counterparts (the person we will work directly with for the next 2 years) and then on Saturday I’ll go to Corinto for a week long stay to get the know the place. I’m very excited and nervous! I hope all is well with everyone else, have a good week!