I’ve begun work this week for another guest house in Port-au-Prince--Norwich House. They have a scholarship program that supports the education of about 100 students in PAP. I have done some more inventorying, this time of books. Unlike in the States, education is not free in Haiti, nor are books provided. As I have been going through the books this week, I was able to catch a glimpse of what it’s like for the children of Haiti to go to school. These books, some of them decades old, are thin, colorless, full of text and unimaginative pictures. It’s no wonder so many of Haiti’s children are not in school. School would quickly lose any fun if lessons were presented in such a drab way, not to mention the lack of creativity from teachers. “Learning” in Haiti comes down to memorization of facts--not very effective. Despite all of this, students thirst for knowledge that might lead them to a better life.
I was also astounded at the way different years in school are classified. There are about four different ways of identifying which year of school a student is in. Some use ascending numbers, some descending. There are cycles and various other groupings. I have to use a chart to figure out which grade a student is actually in. There is little continuity as far as I can tell. Furthermore, there are nearly zero national guidelines or requirements for schools or teachers. Just about anybody can open a school and to be a teacher you need have only completed a grade or two above the one you’re teaching. There are several national exams that are required before a student can progress to the next step of their education, but students from different schools are not equally prepared. All of these things point to the lack of infrastructure in the country.
On a lighter note, we’ve started some salsa dancing lessons. A volunteer cook at Hospice is a professional dancer and offered to give us salsa lessons. Our first day was Tuesday. There seemed to be more ballet (as well as some, shall we say, pelvic movements) than salsa. Apparently when a bunch of Americans are involved, dancing becomes a spectator sport. Most of the young men in the yard left their soccer game to laugh at us. A new rule seems to be in order: No spectating allowed. All spectators will be made to participate or leave.
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2 comments:
Hi Di!
Your impact, and the impact this trip will leave on you, is such a blessing.
As I was reading your descriptions of their books, I had an idea. As different disciplines (math in the next two years) head into textbook adoption, may we pass on our good condition previous editions?
Of course we would have to check with Dist 51 officials about this. I was thinking that NHS could raise money for the funding to ship the books.
That could be a great idea. I will have to check up on that though. I think that the schools have lists of specific books for each class. I'm also not sure about the language barrier... I'll let you know what I find out. If not Haiti, I think there are other programs to send old text books to English speaking countries (mostly in Africa).
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