Volunteering in Ocotal

As part of our program, everyone has to choose somewhere to volunteer. I chose to volunteer in

a school is about 10 minutes walk from my house that is for students/children from the age of 14 months to 6th grade. It is a private school and costs $ 30 per month. It is intended for children of poor parents which is interesting because $30 is a lot of money to a Nicaraguan. Many of the parents are actually single mothers. According to the pregnant kindergarten teacher with whom I was talking, it is common in Nicaragua for men to leave their wife to ´busca una otra´ (to look for another). Many of the single mothers are not able to pay each month, but this is the only school in Ocotal where school goes until 5 pm. The others finish at 2pm. Back to the idea that $30 is a lot, I was told that farm workers make 4 cordobas per day (that´s like 30 cents per day). I have no idea what these single mothers make but they are probably cleaning houses, ironing clothes, or selling food, I don´t know. So honestly, I´m not sure how any of the families can afford to pay the full amount.

The first day of volunteering I was in the 1st grade classroom. It was apparently the last day of school for the older students (1st -6th grade) and chaos reigned in that classroom. I´m not sure it´s any different any other day though. As soon as I walked in the tin roofed classroom without a door, 10 of the 32 1st graders stampeded me, hanging around my neck and arms. I wasn´t really introduced or told what to do, but after I told every student my name, I attempted to help with whatever activity the teacher struggled to implement. There aren´t textbooks, only a really old blackboard and students have notebooks in which they write words listed on the board and then make sentences with. As I tried to help students, it was pretty clear a couple can´t read. Besides, they were more interested in asking me questions. I´d been warned by another volunteer with decent Spanish, but I was surprised that I pretty much couldn´t understand the kids unless they were asking me questions like ´How do you say_______(generally, their first name) in English´ or ´where do you live.´ After a while I managed to make them understand that I was still learning S panish. AS I watched this sink in, one of them commented, 'oh, that´s why you don´t always undertand !´ Bingo, Ana.

The second day of volunteering I was with the kindergarteners. In theory this should be a great place for a S panish learner to be. Unfortunately, kindergarten in this school is not the language rich environment our kindergartens in the U S tend to be. Paper is kept under lock and key. Some students have their own notebooks, some don´t. Same with pencils or anything to color with. There aren´t any toys in the classrooms, and they have some wobbly desks and wooden chairs that they bring out when the students are working on something. Generally, there are 42 students in this kindergarten class and two teachers. The classroom is very large, except it is divided in half with a tall cubby hole type thing and a younger group of students meets in the other half of the classroom. You can imagine the noise level of 60 some 3-5 year olds in one large classroom divided only by a bookcase. There is not a lot of teaching that goes on. When the teachers wanted the students to color, they (the teachers) first drew a picture of a teddy bear on individual sheets of paper and then handed them out to students. The time snailed by as another volunteer and I spent most of the time discussing the school. We weren´t really sure what we should be doing, and with the noise levels, we couldn´t really understand the students anyway. It was all a bit depressing and left us wondering if there is anything we can do to help.

Next week there is no school so I´m not sure where I will be volunteering.