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Published: March 1st 2010
DIY...
The "cupboard" that we painted.Hola a todos!
So, we are now in Ambato, Ecuador, where we are spending a month volunteering with the Jovenes Para El Futuro foundation. We arrived a day late in Ambato due to lots of bus strikes in Peru, and were immediately put to work in the school "comedor" where the school children eat lunch before they leave the school and go home for the rest of the day. Lunchtime is a noisy, messy affair in the comedor, but as we've been given mainly teaching duties, it is nice to see the children outside of classes.
The Jovenes Para El Futuro (Youth for the Future) Foundation comprises of various projects, but all of them focus on the support and protection of vulnerable and deprived children who live both in the city centre or make up part of the indigenous communities which surround Ambato. The Isabel Vasconez Primary School is part of the support that the foundation is able to offer the youngsters that it supports - without the school, these children would not have access to education, and would most likely work alongside their parents from the moment they were born!
Soon after arrival it was decided that
Rehearsal
The kids rehearsing for their "juramento" ceremony. we would take sole charge of English and Sports lessons for all of the classes in the school. It is a primary school with 7 classes of different levels. However, as not all of the children have been lucky enough to start school from an early age, the classes are arranged according to ability and level rather than age. This means that in some classes the age range is from 8 years to 17 years, which can be difficult for the teachers and the kids as well. We set about making ourselves a timetable of lessons, during which we discovered that although english and sports lessons are on the school timetable, when there are no volunteers to take the classes, they don't happen. This is advantageous for volunteers as it automatically means that the kids like you - you are their opportunity to get out of the classroom for PE lessons and have some fun in english lessons. However, it is sad that they don't have any PE when there are no volunteers who are willing to take the lessons, as the 7 female teachers prefer not to teach it. Also, the stream of volunteers is not steady, and so
Deck the streets...
Hanging fruits and flowers in the streets for the fruits and flowers festival. the kids do go for long periods without these lessons at times... meaning that every time an english teacher comes, they have to start again from scratch. A fairly pointless activity really!
ENGLISH CLASSES!
Having taught english before at a Butlins summer hol camp (!!) for european students, I wasn't daunted by the idea of giving english lessons - at first! Before beginning english classes I managed to speak to an American volunteer who has been working on a project alongside the foundation for some months, and had previously been giving english lessons. I read her notes on what the classes had covered and looked over some of their textbooks to get an idea of what I could build on. However, once I actually got to the classroom I found that english obviously wasn't a lesson that the children have on a regular basis, and as a result, most of what they learn they either forget or disregard almost immediately! I have been working with all of the classes for 3 weeks now and they can mostly all manage "Good Morning Teacher" apart from the first years, who can manage "blue", but unfortunately they apply this to any colour
Foam fun
Getting covered in foam by the girls and lots of random strangers in the streets during the carnival ... we also had no water for 4 days so we were fairly smelly..!! I point out!! After 3 months of the "head, shoulders, knees and toes" song, and lots of work on bodyparts, the third year class still cannot identify their head or their shoulders, and think that "kneesandtoes" is one word! Unperturbed I have carried on giving lessons and I have enjoyed it a lot more than I would have expected, especially when I actually succeed in teaching something and the kids enjoy the lesson. I don't expect them to remember it for next time though! Mark, very understandably, has given up on the english lessons and focussed on the sports, as he feels, probably quite rightly, that the classes are to the children nothing more than an opportunity to mess around for 45 minutes and get out of maths classes, which the teachers seem to be very fond of! There are a couple of classes where I feel that I need him present, which is a shame but the classes are so rowdy that one teacher hasn't a hope of controlling them. In one class I was writing on the board when a book hit the back of my head, and whilst I tried to work out who'd thrown it and
Oink
A piggy at the festival, there was loads of yummy street food. settle the class, three boys started a punch up which I couldn't break up! In another they were throwing water bombs, paper aeroplanes and exercise books during the class and one boy was swinging from the ceiling The teacher was present and did nothing. Sometimes I feel sorry for the teachers as I think that they feel they are doing the best that they can with these "problem children" (as they always refer to them) but really, they are neither trained nor equipped to deal with them. However, the conduct of the teachers is also an issue, as they do not always set a good example to the children, by not arriving on time, not starting classes on time, letting them out when they get fed up of teaching and sometimes leaving classes on their own for an hour so that they can have a meeting during school hours! They only work 7:45am - 12:45am and during those hours it is fairly clear that they don't want to teach and in my opinion really should not be teaching!!
SPORTS LESSONS!
The children have a 1.5 hour sports lesson every week. The school has very little resources and space for
sports, but you don't really need much to get the kids running and jumping apart from a good pair of lungs (for shouting!) and lots of energy and enthusiam. The "football pitch" is a dusty pit just outside the school gates, and inside there is a small playground with a basketball hoop, which is a major safety hazard as it's broken and the littlest kids climb right up to the hoop all the time, but noone here seems to think that's a problem! We do loads of different things in the sports lessons, always starting with a warm up which tires most of them out instantly as they are surprisingly unfit, and then lots of team games and competitions, usually ending in a football or basketball game, or both. It is really hard work, and on a Friday when we have 4.5 hours of back to back PE in the baking sun and dusty pit we sometimes long for the end, but all in all it is fun and at times very entertaining. It is also a great opportunity to see another side of the kids to what we see during english lessons or just hanging our around the school.
PE with the first years, aged between about 4 and 6, can be hilarious, as they are so little and clueless that a football game is more of an every-man-for-himself ball chase, with each child on a desperate mission to connect any part of their body with the ball, no matter what direction they may send it. There are about 3 boys who know what a goal is, but scoring at the correct end is another matter, and others seem to think they can win by kicking the ball as far away from the pitch as possible. The older the kids get, the more violent they seem to get. Constant pleas for help from butter-wouldn't-melt little girls being chased and punched by boys are frequent, but when little miss innocent finally gets caught up by her agressor, she normally ends up thumping him all over until one of us can drag them apart. Ideally, you would need about 1 teacher per 4 kids to keep order.
SPECIAL NEEDS
I've already mentioned that even the teachers and foundation staff refer to the children at the school as "problem kids." What they mean by this is that they are underpriviledged children
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Our next door neighbour volcano which spurts ash that gets everywhere! who live in difficult family circumstances with, for example, alcoholic, violent or absent parents, many siblings living in one small room or shack, scarce resources including food and clothes, unbelieveably unsanitary living conditions etc. The majority of the children have literally been removed from the streets by the foundation, that is to say that if they did not attend the school then they would be working as food/sweet sellers, shoe shiners and other things in the city streets every day. The school gives them hope, an opportunity to better themselves, and a place to be children and experience what most normal children do, plus a free meal at lunchtime, which many of their parents can not provide. Of course, due to their backgrounds, there are also some children with extra special needs, for example children whose mothers' drank alcohol whilst they were pregnant, or who simply neglected them as babies and so their development was very slow. Many of the children's mental ages are well below their actual ages. The teachers are not equipped to deal with these children. It would be amazingly beneficial for the foundation to try and attract some volunteers to work closely and specifically alongside these
extra special children for a reasonably long period of time. These are the kids who constantly play up in class, distract the rest and are a nuisance. I think that having english and sports classes with these kids has been great for us to get to see them in different situations, to see what they enjoy, and to be able to figure them out a bit. When they get individual attention they can be fantastic and actually want to learn, but when they are taught in a group they sometimes don't understand and can't process anything so they get bored and play up. It's no different to some children in the UK I guess, but out here they all get labelled "problems" and it's sad to know that they probably ever won't lose that label, whereas kids in the UK with more help and care, would have that possibility.
WEEKENDS
As we're working almost all week, our weekends are the time that we get to explore Ambato and it's surroundings. However, when you stay at the foundation you are with the Jovenes Para El Futuro "family" all of the time, whether you live in the apartment above the school,
Teachers pet
Mark with his favourite little girl called Flor (Flower) ... although everybody knows that teachers aren't supposed to have favourites! or in the "Casa Familiar" where other volunteers live with some children who, for various reasons, do not have a home with their family. We live in the apartment, where one older child lives at a time, whilst we've been here we've lived with two different girls because the first one ran away, a common occurance apparently. The first two weeks of February are carnival time, so we spent one long weekend (Monday and Tuesday were also holidays) with all of the children who live onsite and a french volunteer, at the various carnival processions, getting covered in spray foam and water, at food festivals, free concerts and experienced a rather unpleasant trip to the Bull ring to see the fights, as the tickets had been donated to the school. It is great to really get to know some of the children (currently all girls), to be touched by their personal stories and give them some of the childhood fun that they deserve. The only annoying thing for us is that they are obviously very used to having volunteers present in their lives, and as a result they are used to having the volunteers pay for them to do fun
Irony...
This sign used to say "Please do not litter" ... a week after it was put up, it came to a sad end in lots of different pieces which were flying around the school. The kids tore it down and littered the school with it! things, without considering where the money comes from. At the carnival and also the fair, which they insisted on visiting, they seemed oblivious to how much "plata" (slang for money) everything cost, they just asked for it and expected to be given. It is a shame that one of the main transactions that these girls have with the volunteers is financial. Obviously, the girls have nothing other than what the foundation provides - a house, clothes and food, so unless the foundation hands money to the volunteers to take the girls out, which is occasionally the case, it is ultimately down to the volunteers to foot the bill. I made a point of explaining to the girls at the fair that if they spent all their money on rides they wouldn't be able to eat fast food outside and they looked at me confused, as if I should just run to the cash machine for some more of that free money I can get out!
As I mentioned before, during the carnival holidays we also accompanied the children over 12 years old to the bullring one afternoon. In both of our opinions it was a deplorable spectacle of the
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playing football in our dusty pit machismo culture which dominates here. From the moment the poor animals entered the ring they were doomed to die in an undignified way at the hands of a jumped up young man in a tight, sequinned costume, who had help from a man on a heavily armoured horse with a big wooden stake and various other "helpers" in sequins who plunged what looked like stakes with feather dusters attached into the defenceless animal before the bullfighter was let loose on it. So he could hardly say that he'd single handedly killed the beast, when it was stumbling around, letting out deep pained moans and foaming at the mouth before he'd even brandished his sword. Although of course they acted like they had, turning to the crowd preening with their chests puffed out and flicking their heads at the bull as if to say, "see what a man I am, I'm going to kill you." I had a 13 year old in my lap squeaming because she said the bullfighters reminded her of when she was unfortuante enough to have witnessed a family member stabbing another family member to death, and she asked me to hold her jumper over her face
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lunchtime in the school dining room for most of it. I was relieved when she fell asleep on me. I had tried to take her back home or outside, but she wanted to stay because she didn't want to look silly infront of the other children, including her big sister, who were clapping and screaming for more blood. In all we had to watch 6 bulls slaughtered and when we finally left a wave of relief swept over me, like I'd been freed from a torture chamber.
TIME FLIES...
As I finish this blog entry, we are at the end of our month of volunteering, which has flown by.
Having spoken to the director of the foundation to give our feedback and voice some of our concerns - namely the conduct of the unmotivated teachers, the lack of discipline and the money issue, there are now plans to be made to tackle these issues. We are really happy about this and hope that it will benefit the children in the future. In a way, I wish that I could stay a year to help input new measures and see how things move on, but I think that it will be a very long, slow process
which will need LOTS more internal communication than exists at the moment. However, it does show that even a month volunteering can make a difference. I almost feel that we have been unfair on the children turning up for a month and then walking away just as they have got to know and respect (and some say, love) us! We won't ever forget them.
There are lots of opportunities for volunteering with Jovenes Para El Futuro, we have only seen a small slither of the work carried out by the foundation. There have been some very tough and frustrating moments but it has been a great experience, and it's made me rethink my stance on teaching in the future as I abhorred the idea before doing this! I think we can safely say that Mark will be sticking to his engineering though!!
Home in 7 weeks so see you all very soon!
Amy & Mark xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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