6 Abril 2011

I shot out of bed at 9 am. I had fallen asleep around 9 pm last night and wasn’t worried about setting an alarm because I was sure I would be up with the Sun as usual. From Sun-up to Sun-down, yesterday, we were in the fields harvesting potatoes. By the end of the day we had over 50 100-lb-bags of potatoes. We were 5 people in the field. My hands, feet and back ached and I started contemplating giving myself a chiropractic and acupuncture visit in Arequipa for my birthday. We will see if it is affordable next trip. But, in the middle of the night last night a hail storm came through and the dancing ice on my roof woke me up around 3am. Too cold to go to the bathroom or even make myself some tea, I laid in bed and waited for the ice to tap me back to sleep. Slowly, it became rain again and drummed to me the rest of the night. Stunned that I slept so late, I sprang out of bed and started readying myself for a day of teacher workshops. Coffee, bucket bath, cereal, and I am off. Today’s talk was the first of a 6-part workshop for the teachers. They selected the themes they wanted me to brig to them, and I focused the themes on what I thought they needed most. Today’s theme: basic brain development for teachers (focusing on memory and learning), and how to motivate and keep your kids’ attention. The first part was based on a Brotherson publication that really breaks the basics of brain development down well for parents and I applied this for the teachers here. First, I really focused on how important experience is for the brain to fully develop. Second, how teachers can teach for long term memorization with semantic methods as opposed to repetition which only leads to short term memorization (this was based on Crack & Lockart’s theory of semantic processing). Third, we finished with a program called “SLANT”, that I translated to “SEPAS” that is used in Charter schools of the KIPP program in Houston and NY (this was developed by some Teach For America Volunteeers names Levin & Feinberg). The program is a positive reinforcement program that encourages specific actions that lead to unavoidable attention from the students. I was completely and utterly stunned how interested the teachers were in everything I talked about in this 1-hour charla that turned into 2-hours for both the Primary and Secondary sessions. The teachers were full of great questions and extremely attentive. Somehow, I managed to make the session interactive and funny at parts so the teachers were engaged and laughing (this leads well into the next session about non-formal education and the importance of play in the classroom). I think that this was one of less than 5 times in my site where I was really able to identify with ME. I wasn’t playing the good PC volunteer. I wasn’t bored. I was just me, and only me. I was busy and professional all day. I was talking about my passion for over 4 hours today with people that want to hear about it. Arriving home late there were literally kids waiting outside the door for homework help. If only my everyday could feel so good! But, you know what, I wouldn’t change any day here for the world. Happy Birthday, Mom!