Education in Chacraseca, Nicaragua

As many of you know, I spent my last semester of undergraduate study working at a high school in rural Nicaragua. I wanted to share this experience with you guys by posting some images of my time there. I hope that this will also serve as a learning experience as you will be able to compare and contrast your educational experience to to these students experiences.

Every morning the students that attend Alberto Berrios Delgadillo in Chacraseca, Nicaragua and their teachers get up early to catch the bus to school, some coming all the way from the nearby city of Leon--particularly the teachers. The bus is not exclusively for students, but serves the entire community. Teachers and primarily female students cram inside of the bus,--teachers given preference to the bench seats along the sides while everyone else stands in the aisle-- while some male student pay a cheaper fee to ride on the roof. On the inside of the bus passengers hold handkerchiefs over their noses and mouths to avoid inhaling the dust that enters through the bus' windows.

The students that live in the opposite direction from school that the bus comes or that cannot afford to ride, arrive at school on bikes or walking. Usually two students ride one bike, with one pedalling and the other riding behind on the seat. During the day students leave their bikes parked in the courtyard, and then return home on them when school ends midday.

Once all of the students have arrived at school they line up by class to hear the daily announcements, sing the national anthem and pray. As you can see, students wear uniforms; boys wear blue slacks and white dress shirts and girls wear blue skirts and white dress shirts. (The same uniform is worn throughout Nicaragua.)

Students then go to their respective classrooms where they sit in desks made in the community, often by the very students that attend the school. Unlike most high schools in the States, students at Alberto Berrios stay in the same classroom all day and teachers move from class to class. Students receive instruction in Spanish (literature, writing, grammar), Math, Science, Social Studies, Computer Science, English (language) and PE. There are no electives. Each student typically has a spiral notebook and writing utensils. There are no textbooks. The only resource that the teacher has is the chalkboard, and students diligently copy down what is written. There is a short break in the middle of the morning so that the students can get a snack at the school canteen and hang out with their friends. The school day ends at noon or when the bus arrives to take students back to their homes.

Students often stay after school when the library is open to work on projects, as it is their only means of getting access to books. The library stock is very limited, consisting mostly of teacher textbooks, encyclopedias, dictionaries and maps. There is no Internet access at school and though students can travel to Leon to use the Internet, most cannot afford the trip and the price of access in the cities cyber cafes, which are primarily used by tourists.

How do these students' educational experiences compare to yours? What is the same? What is different?

For more information about education in Nicaragua check out the following sites:

http://www.photius.com/countries/nicaragua/society/nicaragua_society_education.html

http://www.ucis.pitt.edu/clas/nicaragua_proj/education/post-sandinist/Educ-PostSand.pdf

http://www.fsdinternational.org/?q=ntlopps/country/nicaragua/youthanded

¿Cómo es?

This week students began to learn how to describe more permanent characteristics of people using the verb 'ser'. The lack of continuity between this topic and 'time' which we have been learning about for the previous two weeks is obvious, but thus are the issues inherent in curriculum based on grammar driven text books. The point of connection is the verb 'ser' which is used in both telling time and describing people.

On Monday I presented the different forms of the verb ser that accompany different subject pronouns, and introduced students to vocabulary relevant to describing peoples physical characteristics and personality. After the initial presentation we did some practice activities, which we continued on Tuesday.

As this is Thanksgiving week, we planned a low key day for Wednesday, anticipating high absences for family trips and high student energy. Important content, however, was not sacrificed. We began class with an activity in which students engaged each other in 30 second conversations and had to return to their seats if they spoke English or failed to speak at all. The end result was that most students spent 10 solid minutes speaking Spanish! A feat that was exciting for both them and me. We then spent the rest of the period reviewing the vocabulary that we have learned since the beginning of the year through picture bingo (I circle pictures on the overhead and they cross out the corresponding Spanish word on their paper).

On Monday we will continue to practice describing people and begin to learn about how to explain what people like and why. Next week will be my last week, with the final exam on Friday, and hopefully some time to close up the analysis of immigration issues that we have been conducting throughout the unit.

El fin de paso 2

Thursday we had our quiz and I have spent the past few days grading and reviewing them. The average for both classes was a B, though it appears that most students have a pretty firm conceptual grasp of what is being covered and are simply loosing points as a result of consistent spelling errors (something that is very important in Spanish as it often changes a word's meaning). Consequently, I feel relatively comfortable moving into new material on Monday.

Friday was used as a transition day, and we spent the entire period discussing immigration issues and studying the topic as expressed in music and poetry. I felt that this was really important for the students who have been analyzing a number of articles on immigration over the past week or so, and making very insightful statements in their reflections, but have not yet had the opportunity to express their ideas and ask question in a whole class discussion. I continue to struggle with the divorce between this topic and what we are covering in the chapter, and I wish that we could dedicate more class time to a critical analysis of this issue, partially in Spanish, but I am dealing with the compromise as best I can.

In the coming week we will be beginning the third and final section of the Chapter which has to do with describing people and things, and expressing and explaining likes. As this week will be short, I plan to introduce a portion of the chapter that can be covered in two days, as we will spend Wednesday doing a number of fun review activities before the holiday weekend.

¿A qué hora es?

After spending a few days of the basics of telling time, this week we moved into explaining at what time events occur. The difference, as in English, is very minor in Spanish, and very similar to English, but has still proven a bit difficult for some students to understand. Consequently, after realizing that we were having some difficulties yesterday, I revamped our schedule a bit so that we could spend another day on this distinction today, before the quiz tomorrow. I have also decided to make the quiz shorter, testing only this concept and reviewing previous material, rather than covering another aspect of telling time that I was hoping to include. Tomorrow after the quiz I will introduce this new concept, and we will spend Friday discussing immigration issues, before moving into new material on Monday.

¿A qué hora es?

After spending a few days of the basics of telling time, this week we moved into explaining at what time events occur. The difference, as in English, is very minor in Spanish, and very similar to English, but has still proven a bit difficult for some students to understand. Consequently, after realizing that we were having some difficulties yesterday, I revamped our schedule a bit so that we could spend another day on this distinction today, before the quiz tomorrow. I have also decided to make the quiz shorter, testing only this concept and reviewing previous material, rather than covering another aspect of telling time that I was hoping to include. Tomorrow after the quiz I will introduce this new concept, and we will spend Friday discussing immigration issues, before moving into new material on Monday.

El tiempo y una prueba

After introducing schedules on Tuesday, and learning how to describe the order of our classes, we moved onto time on Wednesday. Though a bit complex in Spanish, time tends to be a particularly fun subject, as we get do to things like play with foam clocks and draw. Today we had a short quiz to do a quick check on the information that has been introduced over the past few days and allow me to get a better understanding of the students comprehension. I reviewed these this evening and was pleased to see that most of the kids seem to be doing pretty well, though there were a few apparent areas of concern which I will be sure to clear up as we further develop these concepts next week. The kids that struggled with the quizzes will be given the opportunity to meet with me in individual tutoring sessions and then retake their quizzes if they desire, which serves to make tests a means of formative evaluating learning and aiding in the educational process, rather than a sort of punitive summative evaluation. I tend to frame education in such a was as to assume that if my students are not learning, it is likely because I am not teaching them properly, as teaching is necessarily defined as the production of learning. I do feel that students must play a significant role in the process by exerting effort, but I am willing to meet them more than half way in attempt to cultivate in them a love for learning which will hopefully continue to grow after they have completed my course. Accordingly, all students will be given the opportunity to meet with me personally so that I can tailor education specifically to their individual needs, allowing the whole class to move forward together in the educational endeavor. I only hope that the students will take me up on this offer.

Next week we will learn how to say at what time events occur, specifically classes, keeping on with the theme of schedules, and we will have another short evaluation at the end of the week. On Friday I am planning a more realized educational day in which will explore the issue of immigration through poetry, music and music videos.

Overall things have been going very well, and I am very excited to continue working with my amazing students.

La Inmigracion

In accompaniment to our study of Mexico this unit, we are also investigating the issue of Mexican immigration. One reason for this is that this has been a very hot topic recently with the elections taking place, but the primary reason is to get students to start to think more critically about the complex issues that exist in our world and develop informed opinions so that they will be capable of making informed action as adults. We began our investigation into Mexican immigration over the weekend, as the students were assigned to locate an article on immigration and write a half-page summary/reflection on it. They brought these articles to class on Monday to share with their classmates which kicked off our first class on the topic. The majority of the class time was dedicated to viewing a documentary that presented immigration as a human rights issue, exploring both the economic roots of immigration and the current abuses taking place on the border as a result of militarization. I explained to the students that the documentary took a rather liberal perspective and that they should keep that in mind while viewing. Last night students were asked to write a reflection on what was discussed and presented in class on Monday (the students were also provided with some handouts of information about NAFTA, Operation Gatekeeper etc. to inform their reflections). Having had a chance to reflect on what they had learned, we began today's class with a short discussion on immigration. There was a great variety of opinions expressed during the discussion, and I was overall very pleased with the students' effort to critically analyze this complex topic. Particularly in 3rd period our discussion got rather heated, but students were overall respectful of each other. I eventually pulled discussion to the end, letting students know that we will have many more opportunities to discuss immigration throughout the month.

The second half of class was spent on learning how to describe class schedules using class names and sequence words. (The distinct divorce between this topic and the immigration discussion is a natural result of the grammatical organization of the textbook that I am working with, which makes it difficult to discuss "real" issues). I began this part of the class by describing a model schedule to the students and then asking them some true or false questions about it. Students then participated in a group activity in which they were asked to figure out their partners classes (each student had been provided with a class schedule) using what we had just practiced. Finally, students were asked to write out their class schedules using sequence words and appropriate vocabulary, which is very similar to what they will be asked to do on Thursdays quiz. No surprises :).

Tomorrow we will begin to lean about how to tell time. I will be bringing out the foam clocks!

Bienvenidos a Mexico y Capitulo 3

On Wednesday we began Chapter three. As it was my first day teaching I began by telling the students a bit more about myself and my background. We also had a discussion around the question: why study Spanish? Many of the students expressed how they wanted to learn Spanish, to travel, get better jobs, talk to their friends and family etc. Overall, I think the discussion helped the students to gain a better understanding of the relevance of Spanish to their lives, which is a really important means of increasing their engagement in the class.

We then began our discussion of Mexico, which was greatly facilitated by many of the students who have spent time there on family trips. We talked a bit about the differences between Mexico and the States and also watched a film about the products, people, culture and indigenous communities of Mexico.

Today we did a number of activities to prepare students for the film that the textbook provides to introduce the chapter. For homework the students did an activity with a reading in their books that summarizes the video and today in class we read the dialogue in groups to practice pronunciation. We also worked a lot with the vocabulary of the first section, which has to do with classes and sequences.

Overall, I felt that the class went more smoothly today than yesterday. Hopefully things will continue to improve as I get more experience.

Students also turned in their first reflections today. (I am having students write reflections throughout the unit, in order to learn more about them and what they are taking away from the class). I really enjoyed reading these and was impressed and pleasantly surprised by what they came up with. As this is a new thing for the students, some are still a bit confused as to exactly what is expected of them, but hopefully they will become more comfortable as I continue to provide them with feedback.

Tomorrow we will begin to talk about class schedules and hopefully spend a lot of time doing partner conversational activities.