I would love to be able to put up a post (my first in over a month!!) that details what I've been up to, what I've seen, and all the cool adventures I've been on, but sadly those are going to have to wait. Partly because I haven't finished any of them (I'm too busy to write, I'm living in the moment!!! - is the lie I tell myself as I put off writing for another night in order to watch Queer Eye) and partly because my days have been consumed with brainstorming sessions and internet searches for 'cheap beakers in bulk in pmb'.
Ariana and I have a lot of time to talk. We are with each other, no word of a lie, 24/7. We wake up together, we eat together, we work and work out together, we watch movies together... one night when the power was out we even went into the bathroom together (dark bathrooms after watching horror movies are SCARY by yourself, okay???)
This built-in sounding board is good and bad...
good: sometimes we have actual beneficial ideas for our time here!!
bad: it is literally inescapable and I think we're starting to loose it a bit... we've descended into accent madness and we argue over how much oil is too much oil on our roasted veggies.
But this post isn't about how bad Ariana is at an Irish accent, or about how to properly season veggies - it's about our upcoming week-long education-based camp in September! Our best idea yet was to propose a second round of camp that we would run during the September school holidays to our supervisors... and turns out they thought it was a pretty great idea too. Camp was not only one of the most fun times we've had, but it also was hands-down the best environment for us to actually engage with the kids! It was through late night reminiscing about our good camp memories that we stumbled into the idea of possibly doing it again - but this time with a bit of a different focus.
In the time between camp and now, Ariana and I have really dug in to our roles, and began carving out a place for ourselves. It quickly became apparent to us that we would be most beneficial to the learners as 'educational assistants' in the classroom... but we wanted to take it a step further. We came up with a Learning Assistance Program (LAP) proposal, and slowly but surely we have been meeting with grade 7 teachers and school admin in order to get it up and running. The idea is simple: provide a place where students can come to get a slower paced lesson without all the distractions inherent in a crammed classroom of 45 kids. Watching students who are so clearly trying and still struggling has been one of the hardest parts of being here; watching the teacher continue to forge ahead even as students fall behind (because they are required by the department of education to finish a lesson plan a day, regardless of student comprehension) is heartbreaking. The worst part of it? The sheer panic on the faces of the students when we ask them questions, knowing how scared they are to look 'dumb' or admit to us that they don't understand the question; because they learn majority of subjects in a second language, it is often not that they don't know the answer, but rather that they don't understand what they're even being asked in the first place. The program we are slowly building aims to help with these issues by starting at the beginning: reading comprehension and vocab building.
Our program began to take shape!! One main obstacle stood in our way: there was a persisting fear about students falling behind - that aforementioned dept. of education regulation that students and teachers keep to a strict plan means that there isn't a lot of spare time in the day for Ariana and I to slow the kids down how we would need to in order to assess and help with English comprehension.
These two factors were the catalyst for our idea: maybe we could run another week of camp during the next break - giving us that undivided interaction time with the kids - while also supporting those learners that had been identified as needing the most help at the same time.
An education based camp, a time to really help, on an individual level, those 20 or so students, seemed like the perfect blend.
Call me nerdy, but review jeopardy was one of my favourite things in school. Math bingo, science experiments, trivia quizzes, and handshake murder (to demonstrate the impact of the black death of course)... these are exactly the kinds of activities that promote fun learning that we are going to run.
In all honesty, the first few weeks (read: months) here at the school were a little blurry in terms of what we were doing, and what our impact with the kids would really be. Through the LAP and this camp, it has genuinely become startlingly clear... if I can get on that plane in December knowing that I helped even one kid, I will consider this 7 month adventure the greatest success of my life.
If you have read this far, cheers. This long-winded post, which ended up as more ramblings (surprise surprise) was intended as a place to share again the GoFundMe page that Ariana and I started before our first round of camps. We are trying to keep this camp as low-budget as possible (mainly to promote sustainability, in hopes that the school will continue programs like this even in the absence of interns or funding) but there are some supplies that we would love to be able to provide for the kids; turns out bulk beakers ain't so cheap🤷🏼♀️!! In truth, these supplies aren't as fancy as all that - kids are often slowed down in taking their notes because they are waiting for their turn with the one pencil that is being passed around the table-group. So - pencils, pens, rulers... and then maybe a science experiment or two 😉
If there is anything you are able to donate at this time, please know that any amount makes a world of difference, and if donation is not possible right now, please consider sharing this campaign with anyone you may know who could support us. Ariana and I, not to mention the students we are working with, would be endlessly grateful - these kids make such an effort every day, and we figure it's the least we could do to create a space where those efforts can flourish.
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