A success

I visited the Los Patojos project yesterday. (This is a project I was thinking about volunteering at during my spare time). In short, Los Patojos is the manifestation of the absence of Ritalin in the village of Jocotenango. I don't mean this in an "these kids should be sedated" sort of way. It is just where all of the kids who for some reason don't do, can't handle, or have been kicked out of regular schools go. The only regulation that seemed to be in place was "smoke on the street." They let the kids choose what they want to study. So in one room there is one kid trying his best to break holes in a drum set, in another, breakdancing, and so forth. My personal opinion was that this should be an after school program, not simply a school. As many of you might think, it is weird that I would be against a "choose for yourself" curriculum. The problem is that these kids sit for maybe 5 minutes and actually practice something. As I sat and observed, I witnessed so much impulsive behavior that I felt like screaming. A kid would go pet the dog, run to a guitar, strum it, run to the sink, get a drink, run to the patio, breakdance, run to a classroom with an active lesson, scream, and so on. Multiply this times the 150 kids squeezed into small dirty area, and it was chaos. I couldn't see the "superior learning" that I was being told existed in that environment compared to the traditional schools. Yes, I saw kids physically in a school who otherwise wouldn't have been, but they were not "in school." They were only seeing their impulsive and undisciplined behavior get positive reinforcement. Casasito is one of the only organizations who fund Los Patojos. The director reminds me very much of the main character in the movie recently nominated for an Oscar Exit Through the Gift Shop. In short, I have a project that I may design and give to them to use in their teen program, but I can't work there. I have listened to the rationale for this approach to education, I have witnessed it in-person, and I definitively have concluded that these children are not as well prepared to enter the globalizing world as their peers in San Mateo and Santiago Zamora are.

Today I made some good progress on the tour. I had a very formal (for Guatemalan standards) meeting with the owner of Christian Spanish Academy, and the director. This was my first big meeting here and I was nervous about deliberately showing up late, as is the custom here. David, the owner, commented on my Guatemalan timing, and was very pleased with it. The meeting went off very well, and they are planning on adding the tour to their schedule of activities. CSA alone will hopefully provide an extra Q2000 of income per month for the Santiago Zamora ladies, which is a huge amount for them and a definitive success for my project.

Hilary will be arriving tomorrow! Which means you all will finally get some pictures.