And so the Teaching Begins

My job as a Peace Corps Volunteer is in the Healthy Schools project. I will work as an administrator in the school district around where I will be living. I will work in about 10 schools, but I'll explain this more later. To practice our skills each group worked in a school teaching a couple of charlas (short informal lessons) to a school in the area. My group worked with a super pilas (energetic and enthusiastic) group of sixth graders in our town. On our first visit we helped the kids make a map of their community. This is to get a better feel for the town and identify its resources and what it might be lacking. We broke the classroom up into smaller groups. Kelley and I each took a group of girls and Jimmy worked with the boys. This way we were also able to compare gender differences in the maps (both girls groups drew the bread shop whereas the boys did not and we speculated that this is because it is traditionally a women's job to do the shopping and buy the food for their families).  We originally were going to just give them markers and have them attack it, but they were so precise and artistic that they went to get their own pencils, erasers, and rulers. After they finished their map they identified the places that they liked and didn't like. They liked their school, park, church, but didn't like the cantina (bar) where they said drinking was a problem or the river which is polluted. Since they identified the river as a problem we decided to come back and do our second charla on proper trash disposal and the different classes of trash (organic vs. inorganic) and how long it takes items to decompose naturally. I suggest you look at these facts and then think twice about littering, because that glass bottle will sit on the ground in tact for way longer than you will live.

Below are a couple pictures of me and my super awesome group and our map.