Okay, so I
have officially become the most neglectful blogger in the world. I literally
don’t even remember what the last post was about, so forgive me if there is a
little overlap. Also I am going to write about the last two months events in
one long entry then break it up from there that we as readers you can feel like
you have read so much more, and as the writer I can feel like slightly less of
a slacker (Wow, today I wrote three blog posts” instead of “Um, so I wrote one
really long run on sentence of a blog post, go me, or not…”). Anywhooo
“Rarely is
the question asked: Is our children learning?” George W. Bush, 2000.
The
Guatemalan school year drew to a close in the beginning of October, giving them
a total of less than 180 half days of school completed. “Wonderful Edumucacion”.
The lack or regulated school days and hours of actual class time is still
unfathomable to me. This is what a class schedule looks like in Guatemala
primary schools:
8:00-8:30
Clean the classroom
8:30-9:00
pray and stuff
9:00-10:00
class (?)
10:00-10:30
refaccion (snack)
10:30-11:00
recreo (recess)
11:00-12:00
class
12:00-12:30
cleaning the classroom
12:30 End
of school day.
Also, on
Mondays they have a national mandate of having about half an hour dedicated at
8 AM to a social/historical even, which then cuts even more into the day,
logically they shorten class time, heaven forbid praying, playing, or eating be
taken away from.
In addition
to the slightly frustrating schedule, which makes it very hard to sneak in a
half an hour health lesson there are also an obscene amount of holidays, and
even worse, holidays to prepare for. Por
ejemplo: Mother’s Day. Alright, I can get on board with celebrating all the
moms and everything they do, especially here. The momma’s here literally never
rest, it’s insane. Okay, o one day for Mother’s Day, a day to prep, make
presents or what not, sure I get it, but no, My schools dedicate a week and a
half minimum to preparing for Mother’s day. I know at first that seems
excessive, but I guess when you really think about it, they are only working
two hours a day(what would otherwise be dedicated to learning) on the decorations, presents etc. and let’s
face it, that just isn’t enough time to prepare an adequate thank you, it is
apparently enough time to shape the minds of the children though. Ugh.
On top of
all that there is currently a rift between the political parties here in my
town due to the upcoming elections. This would generally not affect me in
anyway, however as Healthy Schools folks we are suppose to be the link between
the ministry of health and the ministry of education, which, as it turns out is
quite difficult if they are from opposing parties and the idea of
bipartisanship is more foreign than it is to republicans in the states (Zing!).
But seriously, since the health center is a different party than the
superintendent etc. they literally refuse to work together, and even threatened
to pull funding for my camp when one found out the other was participating.
Side note, I am horrible at playing politics, I am blunt, prefer not to engage
in juvenile stupid games, in short, it makes me very grumpy, luckily all this
is exacerbated only about two hundred times because it’s in another language.
Yay. But so it goes, learning to work with in the mess of clusterfuck center
government has taught me many invaluable lessons, that I am sure I will realize
some day in the future…
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