Back to School!

Kids here in the Dominican have been back to school for several weeks now, and we are just finishing up our fifth week of teaching. Perhaps it would be helpful for me to first provide an overview of the public schools in the DR. I want to begin by saying that although most of what I will share is negative, I do not intend to imply that there are no positives. There are many great people working in the schools here and some good things going on. We try to find the positive where we can, while focusing on the problems as challenges to overcome in our DREAM classrooms. Massiel, a year volunteer, works as a liaison between DREAM and the public schools – she is focusing on teacher training and professional development for teachers in three schools in Cabarete.

That being said, there is a lot that could be improved in the schools. First - and as you probably already guessed - there is a shortage of appropriate materials. The classroom is run in a very different way than most of us are accustomed to in the U.S. There are many students in one classroom with one teacher. Students do not receive individual attention – it just isn’t possible given the resources and size of classes. The walls dividing classrooms often do not reach the ceiling, making the rooms very noisy. In fact, when I sat in on a class at Colonia Nueva (just next door to DREAM), I sat to the side in the first row and had some trouble hearing the teacher. Students are not required to exhibit the same level of respect for teachers or one another as in the U.S. and thus, controlling a classroom proves to be very difficult. Night classes are also held for older students (some are teenagers at higher levels, and others are adults who never had the opportunity to receive an education and are studying at elementary levels). Obviously it is dark at nighttime, and there may or may not be power at some schools given the unreliability of power in this country. No power at nighttime makes it essentially impossible to hold classes.

Some other issues surrounding education in the DR are largely political. Students are not permitted to advance past the 8th grade without official government papers/documents (ie. birth certificate). Possession of documents such as these is not as common or easy as in the U.S. It is a widespread misconception that Haitians and Haitian-Dominicans are the only children affected by this law, but in fact many Dominicans are denied further education as well. If these papers are lost, destroyed, or somehow were never obtained, it can be extremely difficult and even impossible to get new papers – the reason being that these papers must be obtained through the Dominican government (and the Dominican government is not the most functional system, to say the least). Another example of the political issue in the schools is the requirement that every student be taught French (I will not expand on the purposes of this law right now, but the motivation behind it IS purely political). As a result, many students who lack the ability to read and write in their own language are expected to learn another, sacrificing precious classroom time.

There are often children in grades upward of 2nd and 3rd who do not possess the skills needed to advance past these grades. That is why we have some children in our program at DREAM who are 14 years old and still do not know their alphabet and cannot read at all. It is easy for children to pretend they are able to read and write and complete math problems, etc by copying off of other students or mimicking answers in class. Without the individual attention needed to discover and address such an issue, students can be passed to the next grade again and again without ever learning to read or write. Also, students with special needs do not receive the attention they need to be successful in school. I had one student in summer camp with very serious anger management issues. He rarely made it more than 5 minutes in class before giving up completely. Another has severe A.D.D. and sometimes made it a few minutes longer. It took much personal attention to get them through one class period - something we were able to provide during summer camp due to the number of volunteers, but something that cannot be provided in Dominican schools due to lack of such resources. It was so exciting when these students became engaged in class and I realized they were just as eager as all of the other students to learn. But it was equally as heart-breaking to realize that without the proper support their success in school would be limited.

Also, students only attend school for 4 hours each day (and yes, recess is included in these four hours). They either attend school in the morning (these are usually the higher level children, who can read and write) or in the afternoon (generally lower level children, most of which cannot read or write). And as mentioned before, some schools hold night classes for older students and adults.

Dominican teachers work hard, and some teach three sessions every day. However, they are victims of the same education system, and therefore do not necessarily have enough knowledge of valuable education practices. At no fault of their own, they may not be equipped to teach the students as effectively as possible.

Although this explanation cannot nearly pass as an all-encompassing description of Dominican schools, I hope that it provides some insight.

So now moving on to DREAM…

DREAM has several Montessori Preschool programs in Cabarete and its surrounding communities. One is located on the second level of the DREAM center. A staff member, Gloribelle, works as the director of all Montessori programs, and all teachers in the preschools are Dominican teachers. On the first floor of the DREAM center in Cabarete, we have a program called Estrellas Jovenes (Young Stars). There is also an Estrellas Jovenes program in Caraballo (a batey about 40 minutes from Cabarete) – it only started this year, and Summer and Wilson (two year-long volunteers) are working on developing the program there. Bateys are small communities that were originally built for the purpose of housing workers to cut sugar cane. This was when the sugar industry was very big in the DR, not long ago. However, the sugar industry has since plummeted and the bateys are generally very poor communities. They are often isolated from more populated areas and thus resources such as education and employment opportunities are not always available.

The Estrellas Jovenes program in Cabarete has two “sessions”: one in the morning and one in the afternoon. Children who attend school in the afternoon come in the morning (again, these are the lower level kids) and those that have school in the morning (higher level) come in the afternoon. The morning schedule is harder to explain, but essentially we offer Early Literacy, Math, English, and Sports classes for kids and English and Computer classes for adults. There are two class periods, each lasting one hour. The afternoon program is different - these kids are divided into 3 groups and rotate between Reading/Writing, Math, and Computer/English, spending 40 minutes in each class every day. DREAM classes are not mandatory, the kids sign themselves up and come each day on their own. I know what you are thinking… why would any kid sign himself us for extra classes in addition to attending school? We actually have quite a large wait-list – DREAM is a pretty popular place with the kids in Cabarete. We try to keep classes small, so that we can give students as much individual attention as possible. It is hard to put kids on the wait-list, but realistically, once the classes get too large they are no more effective than the instruction the kids receive in school. And with a smaller class-size, we can implement student-centered teaching methods: something most Dominican children have never experienced. This method of instruction focuses on the student and their development in the classroom. It steers away from the traditional classroom design with a teacher speaking most of the time in front of the class. Instead, student-centered teaching encourages students to work together, be more engaged, and involves hands-on projects and activities. DREAM also offers students many materials they do not have access to in their schools or their community. These include the obvious materials you would expect every classroom to have, and much more. I realized after spending some time here, that there is essentially nowhere in the town of Cabarete for parents or children to access reading books – except in the DREAM library. La biblioteca DREAM is open to the public every day of the week and there is a wide selection of books (theme, level, size, etc).

I co-teach with Mauri in the morning program. We teach the early literacy class (this is Spanish language literacy, just to be clear. All classes are taught in Spanish at DREAM, the only exception being the English classes mentioned above.) I knew it would be a challenging class to teach before we began, but it has proven to be even harder than expected. The kids’ ages in this class range from 10 to 14. Only a small handful of them can read – albeit, at a low level. Most of them however do not know most of their letters or how to read or write. We have had to re-evaluate the organization and activities for this class several times so far. For example, since learning that many students in our class could not write their names, this became ‘warm-up’ priority #1 – we write teach students’ full name on lined handwriting paper and they practice writing it several times. Most kids in the US begin learning how to read and write in Kindergarten and have learned how to do so (at least on some level) by the time they advance to 1st grade. Most of these children are ages 5 or 6 and have been read to since they were very little. The kids that come to us at DREAM are ages 10-14 and have not been read to at home. They are in school and have been in school, but still cannot read. There are many issues that make it very difficult to teach a 12 year old who cannot yet read to do just that. Mauri and I have had ups and downs and many frustrations trying to determine how to get past these barriers and help teach the kids something about reading and writing. I won’t lie, it has been difficult and will continue to be, but I am really enjoying it and, although slow, we are seeing some progress.

I have recently begun working with some of the kids from this early morning class that need the most help, and am REALLY enjoying this. Sometimes it is hard for certain students to learn and progress in a group, even if only a group of 4 or 5 students. This extra bit of tutoring will hopefully get them on track with their classmates. Not to mention that the personal attention makes them feel special – even Nelson who never wants to do anything other than color in class got pretty excited about the “vowel game”. =)

The afternoon is very different from the morning and a lot of fun! We have kids that range in age from 10 to 16. They can all read and write, but at varying levels – some can read young adult novels while others struggle with literature at that level. Taylor and I teach the reading/writing class in the library. We are reading Esperanza Renace (Esperanza Rising) as a class. The book is about a young girl whose Mexican family has to move to the US during the Great Depression. Aside from developing reading skills we are able to explore some great themes and ‘life lessons’ from this book. We also teach classes on grammar and writing techniques – for example, punctuation and writing with paragraphs. These classes seem to be slightly harder for the students. Every lesson we teach is based on the student-centered classroom model that I mentioned above. This design is more fun for students – which is good because they are with us by choice and do not want to attend classes just like the ones they came from in the public school earlier that day.

We try to incorporate other subjects into our classes as well. For example, before beginning Esperanza Renace, we spent a couple class periods learning the History of Mexico. This served as a history class as well as a Map-skills class as the students labeled and colored a map of Mexico in relation to the DR and the US. Just some examples.. I hope that gives you a good idea of what class is like.. its hard to explain it all.

Some exciting things coming up are our Community Service week next week, substitute teaching in the Public Schools, and our Mini-course/Leadership classes. For our Community Service week we will not have class as usual, but instead will be holding activities each day with a focus on Community Service and with an “Olympic Games” design. For example, we plan on having a “Callejon clean-up” one day. Groups of kids will have bags and the group with the most trash collected around our neighborhood will win that “event”.

Massiel, as mentioned before, works with the public schools and leads teacher training programs. Also as mentioned before, Dominican teachers have a full schedule that does not allow for time to attend these teacher training workshops. And classes in DREAM are only held Monday-Thursday. Fridays are reserved for workshops, training/professional development, planning, and any other miscellaneous programs. So, on some Fridays we will be substitute teaching at the public schools in Cabarete to give the public teachers an opportunity to attend Massiel’s workshops. Our first day will be this Friday, Oct. 9. Mauri and I will be teaching a 2nd grade class.. I’m excited and nervous!

Leadership and Mini-courses include Hombres Jovenes (Young Men), Mujeres Jovenes (Young Women), Revista (Newsletter), and Apprendizaje (Internship) groups. Young Men and Young Women are groups that focus on individual and community development by empowering these young people. I know that probably sounds pretty generic – I will have more to tell you about these groups once they get started (Kadi and I will be leading the Mujeres Jovenes group). The newsletter group will work toward publishing this season’s edition of the DREAM newsletter for the community and the Internship group will work on leadership skills and have jobs(internships) in the community. A few of the older kids from the Estrellas Jovenes program will be in these groups along with other young adult participants living in Cabarete.

Another function of DREAM is to provide a ‘safe haven’ for its students and other kids in the community. Not everyone who wants to be in classes can be, but the center’s library and outdoor pavilion are constantly occupied with kids from the Callejon. Something I do not feel fully equipped to explain in full detail is the nature of violence in this community. We witness it in its simplest form when kids throw rocks at dogs in the street (there are always dogs wandering around). And unfortunately, Taylor and I have witnessed a few ‘episodes’ in the “play” community where we go to play soccer. Sadly, it is something that some of our students are all too familiar with. In the US there are programs and/or services to help victims of violence, but here there is nothing you can do. I know that is sounds horrible, and believe me, it is hard to deal with and accept. Any intervention at all would only exacerbate the problem, and so we do all that we can: provide a safe place for kids to come to learn, read, and ‘hang out’. I have gotten to know a couple students who have struggled or do struggle with this, and the hardest part is to step back and judge how I can best help them, given my abilities and resources. This, for me, is the hardest thing to accept about life here in the Callejon.

There are some things that I struggle with as a teacher and as a resident in Cabarete. As a teacher, I find it hard to motivate some students. Emphasis on education is not as big here as it is in the US. Many students lack their parent’s (or anyone’s) expectation to succeed in school, or to even attend school regularly. This community is such that many kids work – around town, for their parents, for their aunt/uncle, etc. I see Javier (a kid that was in my group during camp) regularly at the beach and on the main street with his shoe shine box walking around asking anyone and everyone if they would like their sandals shined. Javier is 10. Most often I see him on the weekend when I am relaxing and reading on the beach. His answer to my question, “Que estas hacienda – what are you up to?” is.. “working”. Another student, Pabiel (age 13), misses class pretty regularly. Some days he comes to check in, with a little 2 year old in tow, to explain why he cannot be in class – he has to take care of his younger brother. But, again, they are all with DREAM by choice, meaning they want to be there for one reason or another. And most of them are eager to learn, whether it is obvious or not. One other problem we had earlier on was a lack of respect from the students. It is definitely difficult to teach in Spanish. I learn more every day and feel more confident, but in the beginning it was difficult for Taylor and I, as two (relatively) young females, to teach a class of students in Spanish when a couple of the kids are only 6 years younger than us. In fact we now have a couple students who are 17 and older. However, as each week goes by and we get to know the students better and vice versa, that has become less and less of an issue.

I never thought I would be living at a beach (much less in the Caribbean!) - but I am grateful that I do. Days are long and sometimes pretty stressful/emotional/frustrating, and come 5 o’clock, a walk on the beach can be very therapeutic. It is my time to unwind and think, my time to myself and time with God. I can retreat from the stress and craziness of Cabarete, if only for a short while, at the beach.

So, I know that is a lot to digest in one post.. I had some lost time to make up for. But all in all, I have to say that I really do LOVE it here. I am so glad to be here and to be teaching at DREAM. We have a great group of volunteers and staff and I am so thankful for my co-workers. Although I may leave the center every day at 5, utterly exhausted, sometimes worried about this kid or that lesson plan, I absolutely love the work and the kids I spend each day with.

Speaking of those kids, I must be off to bed so that I’m up and at ‘em tomorrow morning!

Ciao!

Lindsey