Meetings

Well, things have been going pretty smoothly at Vida Abundante. The last three months have absolutely flown by; I cannot believe that it's the middle of March already. It's kind of alarming...where did the time go? But everything is so good. I feel confident with my classes, my students are well-behaved and seem happy, and I am comfortable in my little house on the mountain.

The biggest challenge I feel like I'm facing these days is exhaustion. Not just my own exhaustion, but that of my students as well. We haven't had a day off since we returned from Christmas break on January 4th. That's a long time. They also have very long days for an elementary school- we go from 7:40-3:00. I stay and tutor a student every day after school too, so I'm actually there until 4pm. Those are long days and long weeks. Furthermore, the students are all sick! I had 12 students in my class on Monday, and we're a class of 19. That's a lot.

So, I wrote to the administrators in Tegucigalpa, and asked them if we could have a day off. I have always had a gift for diplomacy, even for silly things. In high school, I was always the one asking teachers for an extra day to study for a test. Now, I feel that I'm often the teacher asking for stuff... who knows what they think of me over in Tegucigalpa! Anyway, they shot me right down about the day off. They told me that, and this is a direct quote,

"In our country, most jobs require employees to work Saturdays, education being an exception to allow teachers to rest. [...] We are just two weeks away from spring break, we are certain that if this time is managed appropriately everyone will have plenty of time to rest." Hmm. I knew I wasn't going to get anywhere via email, so I requested a meeting.

The meeting wasn't just for a day off. I have a lot of things that I think Vida Abundante could help work towards. So, I met with these two administrators when they came to our school. First, I explained why I had requested a day off. They were receptive; they said that although they couldn't just put a free day into the calendar, they would give us a week without tutoring and then they decided to have an early dismissal for the students on Friday. Hey... I'll take what I can get!

But more importantly, I talked to them about two proposals I have for our school. In my last blog I talked about the gender roles here in Honduras. I proposed that the administrators initiate some sort of sex education program for the junior high and high school students in Vida Abundante. This school offers an amazing opportunity for students. Learning English opens all sorts of doors for them. However, knowing English won't do much if they have to support children while they're teenagers. I suggested a program making students aware of the ramifications involved in the decision to have sex, and how to protect themselves if they do decide to have sex. By doing this, we would be empowering both our male and female students. I am really happy to say that the administrators were extremely open to that idea and seemed interested in trying to start some sort of sex education program in the schools.

I also talked to them about starting some sort of dialogue with parents about proper discipline methods. Spanking might be culturally acceptable, but that doesn't mean that we can't strive to change that. I'm not talking about the legal issues of spanking (like they thought I was), I'm talking about it as a moral issue. An adult shouldn't be striking a child. That's just the bottom line. The administrators said that they are going to look into seeing what they can do to start some sort of dialogue with parents about how the school would like to see children being disciplined at home-- i.e. without violence.

Anyway, it was a good meeting. I feel happy that they were so receptive to what I had to say, and I'm optimistic that something might actually come out of it. In the meantime, I'm still working on this decision that I have to make by Friday. I'm starting to feel some peace with what I'm going to do... I'll write about it after I have the meeting with my principal on Friday. Until then... if you read all of that... thank you. and que le vaya bien!