Hello all,
So we just made ourselves dinner in our apartment and folded our laundry (like the cute little family that we have become), all while commenting on the bags under each other's eyes. As I type I am also trying to find a single song that I like on this cd that I bought yesterday. I went to the gorcery store and looked at their top 10 cds hoping to find some kind of entertaining pop music. The cover screamed POP MUSIC because its some pretty boy that sings songs with cheesey titles. Except it was SO BAD. LIKE ACTUALLY LAUGHABLY BAD. I cant think of anyone I dislike enough to give this to them. Oh well. See, here's the thing. We're working on three projects simulanteously, which is totally awesome except that we now have homework on top of working from 9 am until 8pm everyday. We get a 2 hour lunch break that allows us to do things like laundry and buying groceries. Its intense, but totally worth it.
See, we start the morning with our 4 hour class.
Today we did a cliff notes version of Mexican culture (mostly architecture, music, dance, food, folklore, and interactions)
it was pretty interesting, and we watched a bunch of different kinds of dance that I totally want to learn.
Our professor pointed out that many countries have one traditional kind of dress.
BUT MEXICO has at least one kind of dress from each state, and in the case of Oaxaca there are hundreds.
The clothes were so beautiful. I plan to go on a quest in Pachuca to find some of the skirts they wear in the following videos.
A style from Guerrero (The Iguana Dance)
A style from Veracruz (Colas)
A style from Jalisco (the one that most people know)
Then we have a break for lunch, which today meant that we went to the super market and ate gorditas before we met with someone to plan our weekend. We're going to stay in Puebla for Saturday night and turning it into a road trip with our buddy Jossue (the professor who basically acts like our Dad here. Hector even calls him Mom. He totally fits in with everything and laughs at our constant youtube references. As thwaites would say, he's "with it") I need to call tomorrow and make a hotel reservation tomorrow, but we're super excited!!
Then we went to our second project and met with another professor to discuss demographics, surveying methods and other ways to figure out how we can best help efforts towards education reform and basic public services in that particular part of Pachuca. The professor for this is really intense. We had homework due today predicting demographics and possible problems we expect to deal with in Huixcazhda. In class we went over how we can deal with some of these problems on smaller scales. It was super intense, but all really interesting. For this class we now need to finish a survey that we started for homework which will be using when we approach the community with our questions next week. We also need to run an analysis on the demographics, infrastructure and socio-economic class of Pachuca and a second one on this specific part of Pachuca, then present our findings and some theories we have about what needs to be done and what we expect will be concerns of the public.
This was followed by our daily tutoring session. I'm working with my same two kids that I started with yesterday, Jose Alfredo and Lorena. It's really interesting going through the work we have to give them and finding gaps in things. Now we are supposed to bridge the gaps that we see and work with them to fill in those gaps so they will be ready for higher levels of math. I like teaching them. It feels really rewarding to see them go from looking SUPER confused, to understand what we are supposed to be doing. They are really curious and bright kids. Alfredo crunches numbers in his brain better than I can sometimes, but is very shy. It actually kills me when he smiles because he gets something because it is the CUTEST THING EVER. All the kids are around 11 years old, and some of them decided to come on their own because they wanted to get better at math while others had their parents enroll them. It's really interesting to look at education from this level rather than a policy level, and I'm really glad to be doing it. Even if it is math and I've become a much more social sciences focused kind of person.
I think what worries me is that they are smart kids, but their teachers have let them get away with taking short cuts. Particularly with long division. I'm trying to make them work through the problems rather than crunch, so when they do higher level math or physics stuff they wont be crushed when they are checking over their answers. They also have a lot of trouble with fractions and division. At first this worried me, but i too HATED fractions for the longest time, until they were well explained to me. And thats exactly what I'm going to do. I am going to teach them to love fractions, just like I do now.
Evelyn and I get to work with our kids in the library, which is helpful because when we go through the activities that we're supposed to do and we have questions, we poll each other in English. I have been lucky that my kids are really cooperative and we get everything done that I want to. Or at least we have in our first two sessions together. They are very focused and smiley and truly wonderful.
Now I realize that this makes it seem like I now want to be a teacher. This is not the case and I will tell you why.
I love working with the kids, but it doesnt challenge me.
It challenges me to come up with new ways to communicate various concepts, but beyond that, it is not satisfying.
Or at least not as satisfying as it is when we were going through effective communication methods for when we survey the community and try to predict problems and how we would solve them. NOW THAT is a challenge I want to take.
Education is really important, and I'm glad there are people out there like Hector, who wants to build a math and science charter school in southern california, near his town, that will push kids and teach them the skills they need to be the next whiz kids of the world. Still, I'm having fun with the kids :)
And so for this I need to come up with a series of problems to make them practice their division and fractions.
So I'll probably work on the curriculum tomorrow because we have a trip to see another incubador social site to visit tomorrow, so we wont have classes or tutoring to do until Friday.
For tonight I plan to read. which I have YET to do. And I'm going to bed BEFORE 1am since we dont have homework. well, we do, but I'm not going to do it right now. SO THERE. I'm listening to Camila, watching hector sleep on our couch and evelyn type. and planning to spend the evening as I want to do.
Good night world!
p.s. I'm super happy right now. In case you were wondering. There are so many brilliant things going on at once that i feel like I'm on top of the world. :D But I also miss many of you. You hear from me, but I dont hear from you! Email me or something! I miss you guys!!!
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