El fin

My students are learning! I was greatly intimidated at first to try to teach people so different from me a language as crazy as English in a language not my own. However, I am finding it gratifying to realize at this point that the students who have proven to be most dedicated and who have developed a relationship with me through patience and good attitude have learned something! I am now able to note baby steps of progress in adult students and schoolchildren and in myself.

While it is important to me to note progress, I keep in mind that easily they could learn without me in their lives, easily it could be someone else in their paths teaching them, easily they could improve their lives without my presence. The resources are here. The keys to their learning remain in their own hands.

These keys include the willingness to seek knowledge despite feelings of ineptitude and awkwardness and to listen to and involve others, the initiative to take responsibility for and engage themselves in their own learning, and the commitment to practice putting it into practice on a regular basis so that it is cemented into their minds and ingrained in their habits.

I understand that what they are learning is at best minimally important within the greater context of their entire lives, but I am glad to have been present at this stage and to have been a part of their lives and learning nonetheless.

Estan aprendiendo

Evelyn and Ingrid are two of three sisters of one family in Club Glow. We took an adventurous bike ride the last week of school. Ingrid especially is a gifted child with leadership abilities and communication skills. She always has a spark in her eye. She is the leader of the girls' tenacious and dogged knocking on our door at any hour to visit us. I'm grateful one person likes us enough to visit!

Ruth, my former host mom, and Silas, my prized pupil. He has made phenomenal strides in his language learning; he has also been one of the primary students responsible for my understanding of the best methods of teaching Spanish speakers who lack formal education.

The promised Internet Cafe has become a reality this spring. The youth group continues to manage its use on their own.

Late in the school year the girls club has enjoyed a wealth of enriching activities outside of school, visiting my house, painting, learning about HIV/AIDS, playing boardgames, and discussing stereotypes and gender. I was very proud the day the girls began to ask questions of the larger world and were interested in learning about places on the map I have of Central America. Regrettably, the girls who were selected to participate in camp this summer never gained the permission of their parents, mostly due to the notion that a trip to Belmopan (in tiny Belize) is too far from home. Que lastima!

Our friend Yin from China began to visit the house for regular English lessons as well. He helped me learn the appropriate way to show Chinese speakers how to form the sounds of the English letters and how to remember them in relation to the sounds which are familiar to their mouths. We spent hours seemingly yelling in each other's faces and peering at the settings of each other's mouths in order to learn.