creativity

Here I am presenting in Flores Costa Cuca (drenched in sweat)

 Happy tuesday to you!  So I´m just about at the T-1month point with Peace Corps...  And let me just say that I´m really excited.  There´s something about change that makes one see new possibilities and freedoms, that in reality were always there, but until you finish something you don´t let yourself see it.

This past month, here at the office we´ve been giving workshops to all the school principals of the state (590!) on how to improve evaulation techniques in the classroom.  USAID has a program called Reforma en el aula (Reform in the Classroom, YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK, PEOPLE!) that produced a great book full of little gems on how to make better tests, how to use debate, selfevaluation and a ton of other tools to make sure students are learning and not just attending school. 

NOTE THE PROJECTOR SCREEN!

These workshops have meant some brutally early mornings (alarm at 4:30 a.m.), but it´s been great to get to go to municiapalities that I hadn´t visited before.  The directors have been pretty great, it´s amazing how receptive people can be when you are talking about a subject that interests their intellectual/educational background.  When I worked with the Healthly Schools project, it would feel like pulling teeth to get teachers active about health habits in the schools.  Why?  They are not health workers.  If they had an interest in health issues they would have chosen to be health workers.  But they didn´t, they chose to be teachers.  And while being a teacher implies holistic education, sometimes spending hours talking about brushing teeth and hand washing just isn´t that exciting.

BUT, what does excite them is how to teach better.  And that´s what this past year has been (for me).  Working with teachers on how to teach better.  Specifically how to teach reading better. 

When I was home, I went to visit my nieces´ preschool classroom and I was blown away.  They had a treasure chest, dress up clothes, colorful rugs, A PLAYGROUND!  When I came back to Guate I was in this mentality ´what a difference´, not good, not bad, just what a pronounced difference that money makes in how we live our lives, how we educate, how we operate, how we function. 

Please take a look at the projector screen we used at our most recent workshop in Flores Costa Cuca.  You are not mistaken, that is in fact a white bed sheet.  Now, how practical is that!  Super portable, super easy to hang anywhere, no need to lug some huge projector screen, or spend hundreds of dollars to buy a huge projector screen and install it.  Call me crazy, but THIS. IS. GENIOUS.  I love the juxtaposition of using the technology of a projector, with a bed sheet.  Sometimes money makes us impractical.  Just as poverty makes us creative. 

Now, I´m sort of looking at everything and saying, Wait. One. Second.  This is only one example.  There are thousands.  Hundreds of thousands of brillant little things here that make me think, ´Hey, that´s really smart´.  This is not just in Guate, it´s in the US, in Nigeria, in Turkey, in France, in the Philipines.  So I´m on a new mission to start appreciating these details of creativity...

p.s.  Killed the third mouse in my house yesterday.  Pia is turning into a hunting dog (I´m not opposed).  My house being nicknamed ´La Ratonera´ by my host fam is endearing, right???