18-19 November 2024: Vacation School Ends with a Fiesta

After I returned from the weekend at the Paredón beach, there was only one day left of classes (Monday) followed by an end of vacation school pageant and special lunch on Tuesday.  On Monday, the students made Christmas trees with paper, green water-soluble paint, glue, and salt.  The mixture took forever to dry so I don’t think the kids got to take them home. 

The pageant/fiesta had a Christmas theme as Thanksgiving is unknown in Guatemala.  Groups of students gave short performances or presentations of various things they had learned and practiced at the vacation school.  A good time was had by all including quiet and curmudgeonly old Will.    

After lunch, I bid warm goodbyes to Eunice and Carmen who had supervised the exercises in the science lab where I spent most of my time as a volunteer.   I also thanked and was thanked by Susan García, the volunteer coordinator for the school, who had invited me to come help out several months earlier.    

You can click on the following short video clips of a couple dance numbers:

 

In this second clip, watch the little girl wearing reindeer antlers on the left.

While I walked a couple blocks from the school to catch a bus, I thought about my four-week experience as a volunteer.  During that time, I had become increasingly uncertain as to whether I was making much of a contribution to the students’ education.  In retrospect, I wished I could have done more to help the students learn English in the ecology class where I was originally assigned.  Hopefully, the students in the lab sessions got something out of my presentations and lab exercises on oil spills and dinosaurs.  I’m sure Eunice and Carmen found me helpful – passing out and collecting lab coats; getting out beakers, glasses, and other equipment; encouraging and helping the students a bit with their work; and helping clean up everything after the students left the lab.  Maybe, if nothing else, I set an example to the kids by showing them that an old male gringo science professional didn’t think he was too damn important to be willing and able to help out and take direction from their female teachers and let those teachers run the show.  And my reward was getting unsolicited hugs from a few of the seven- and eight- year-old girls.

And what did I get out of the experience?  It was certainly a worthwhile exercise in humility.  It’s taken me many years to let go of a big chunk of my ego.  Doing so makes life a lot easier.  Oh, you’ve put a woman in charge of the ecology/English classes who has no teaching experience and is young enough to be my granddaughter?  Fine, do it your way.  And, she doesn’t want me to use the introductory videos on ecology or the materials I prepared before coming to Guatemala?  And she is using essentially the same lesson plans and material for the teenagers as she is for the little kids?  OK, let her run the class. 

Maybe I was a bit disappointed about these slights and what I perceived as poor judgment, but I didn’t get mad, argue, or make a big stink, even when the administration moved me from the ecology classes to the science lab.  There are times when it’s better to just go with the flow and not care too much, especially at a school that is doing so much good work overall.  And given my hearing problems, I felt lucky that the school administrators hadn’t just decided they didn’t need me at all after my first few days there.