Hike up to the school in Carrizalito early Tuesday Morning

 Teacher workshop on Monday with teachers from El Rosario, Los Planes, La Concepcion and Coral Falso. Also joined by TCI board member Roberto. 

The Human Knot- Hanna ties it up with the Honduran teachers

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

by Hanna

Soy una maestra! The day has been full and multi-faceted, but the overarching theme has included a deep appreciation for teachers around the world and a thankfulness that I am entering the profession. Today, we woke early to hike up the mountain trail to Carrizalito.  The village is only accessible by a long foot trail that zags up the mountain and follows the ridge. We saw beautiful vistas and learned about the area’s birds (Montezuma Oropendola make teardrop-shaped nests), plants (Maguey is part of the agave family and its fibers can be made into rope), and insects (Leaf-cutter ants bring bits of leaves and flowers to their “jefes” who break them into pieces with their large cutters. If you stomp on their house, the ant bosses storm out). However, we were sweaty and sore by the time we reached the top. Imagine how humbled we were when we learned that the teacher in the village makes the trek every school day. Teachers are dedicated.

Later, our second teacher workshop kicked off with a lesson presented by Erika, the teacher in La Reinada. She wrote an addition word problem on the board and then used a place-value chart and small pieces of paper representing different units to demonstrate how to solve the problem. She also had a wooden box with different compartments for the ones place, tens place, hundreds place, etc. Students could use whatever objects were lying around to build the numbers.  All of us Antioch students were happily surprised to see teachers in another country using manipulatives and other teaching methods that we have been learning about in New Hampshire. Erika says she would give this problem to small groups of first-graders to solve together. Not only was her lesson clear and effective, it also used fewer materials than we do in the United States. We are so accustomed to needing plastic multi-link cubes or many copies of paper worksheets. If we teachers take the time, we can use what is around us to teach great lessons. Teachers are clever and resourceful.

We played several fun games and interactive activities with the Honduran teachers. All of them have centered on the books from the traveling library collection we are building. At first, I wasn’t sure how the games and lessons would go over. Were the teachers wanting something more serious? Would they be shy? Would they think we were just silly kids? Would they not appreciate the value of incorporating fun into learning? I had nothing to fear, though. The teachers jump right into games—laughing and bringing friendly competition to everything we do together. A highlight of today was watching the Honduran teachers look through the books we brought and listening to them share ideas for how the books could be useed in their classrooms: story books, natural science books, chapter books, books about health, books about math, books about music. Then someone found the song book and they all erupted into singing De Colores and other songs. Teachers are fun.