Field Trips (part 2)

This next field trip was organized for our whole school. Have you ever been on a field trip for all the primary and secondary grades in a school? I hope not, because this was the most exhausting half-day of my life. Every year, similar to field day, the students get to go somewhere in the La Unión area and just play around for a half day of school. This year’s destination was the founder of our school system, Pastor Evelio’s ranch. He lives about 20 minutes outside of town in an aldea called El Filo. The reason that Abundant Life has a school in such a random and rural place (La Unión) is because this is where Pastor Evelio grew up. He knows what the circumstances are like out here and this is his way of giving back to the community he calls home.

El Filo. Since he is the founder of the whole school system, he by no means lives meagerly out here. (He actually lives in Tegucigalpa, this is just his secondary home.) His property is stunning. It is tucked away in the mountainside and stretches over a vast piece of land. It is filled with many wonders for the students to discover. I would have loved the trip more if there was some actual organization and direction for the chaperones, but there simply was not so the day unfolded in complete chaos.

We split the students into two groups – primary and secondary – and I naturally followed my students. Julio did not let go of my hand at any point during the day (it was clear where I belonged). Everyone got on busses at the school to take us up there; we only had two busses and we clearly needed three, but that was not a big obstacle (not for the smaller-than-average Honduran students we have). The younger students just piled into the seats, 4 or 5 across, while all the older ones and teachers stood in the aisles. I was thankful to be standing by the door because I was receiving plenty of fresh and moving air. Once we got there, the kids’ eyes all instantly fell upon the playground. There was no stopping the herd of them rushing off the bus to be the first ones on all the toys. We were quickly instructed to collect them all and move them to a gazebo before they broke the equipment. From there our principal directed each group with what their ‘schedule’ looked like for the day, but once he left with the secondary students, all the primary teachers were at a complete loss of what we were supposed to be doing. Thankfully a worker showed up to start our walk around the grounds.

The ranch is home to a wide variety of animals, and what little kid does not love animals? All of the animals were in cages but we saw buffalo, rabbits, donkeys, cows, sheep, and deer (I felt very bad for these guys because they were so frightened by the crowd of students that they started running around in circles like crazed animals and one even bit his tongue so badly that blood was just dripping from his mouth). With every new cage we came upon you could hear endless ooos and aaas over the animals. Those kids were so fascinated by them all! 

I have two favorite moments: 1) When we were looking at the cattle, Juan looked at me and said in his beautiful English, “Miss, is very dirty here.” Why yes Juan, cows tend to be very dirty, smelly, poopy animals. 2) A fourth grader was certain that there were dinosaur fossils on the grounds and was determined to show them to me. I had to stop him from descending a slop into the woods to find them. Our animal hike took about half an hour and I was sincerely hoping that it would exhaust the students, but I was terribly wrong.

Jake, Cassidy, Beth, Harriet, and I were in charge of the primary students and it was our job to each come up with a different whole-group game that the students could play. In hind sight, we should have each set up somewhere on the grounds and then had the grades rotate through our games (since there were five of us and five grades), but we were not that clever. Instead we just took turns playing our games while the others babysat. Jake, Harriet, and I were the only ones who managed to get students to participate in our games. It all is just a blur when I think about it.

Jake had a game of tag going on where each player had a scrap of shirt tucked into their pants and everyone was trying to rip out their competitors’ flags. The boys of course showed no mercy or restraint when chasing down the other boys. Their rounds were always very physical. The girls on the other hand, were very delicate with each other and precious to watch as they somehow managed to take each other out of the game.

Harriet planned a three-legged race. Watching this one put me in a fit of giggles. I could not help but laugh hysterically at all these little kids trying to run with one leg attached to someone else. Most of the teams could not manage more than a few steps before they ended up as a heap of students on the ground. It was a good strategy because they would surely trip other pairs so they weren’t the only ones who could not make it to the finish line!

My game started out as a race where a member from each line had to spin around a bat or stick 5 times before running down to their cone and then running back. They were all so eager to win that they forgot how to count through 5 full turns, so the game quickly fell apart. Then my time turned into playing ‘baseball’ with the boys. At first I hit the ball to them while the chased it down and threw it back to me (yes, a glorified version of ‘fetch’). Then the boys all wanted to hit so I set them up where they could hit and not lose the ball in the trees or over the fence. I threw the ball to the batter and let each one get five hits. I think our school should organize a baseball team because some of those crazies were hitting the ball quite well!

Sometime during all of this the kids ate snacks AND lunch. I cannot even remember when that happened because I never had the chance to stop moving. I was constantly chasing kids down to keep them from getting lost or destroying the property. When I wasn’t running after students, I was busy trying to keep them occupied. They never lost an ounce of energy while I was watching the clock persistently, waiting for the moment we got back on the busses, signaling the end of the chaos. The bus ride home would make adults in the States freak out. Our bus was a mix between a dance party and a zoo. Kids were hanging from the bars on the ceiling, screaming at their top of their lungs for the entire duration of the ride, feet and heads were sticking out of every window, they were crawling over the seats, and every kid started chanting for all the teachers to put on a show and dance. Needless to say, I crashed when I got home.

Well, the end is here folks! I am on the brink of the last week of school. It has been a struggle to keep all the students focused up to this point. I’m sure I was just as checked out by the end of the school year as these students are, but now that I am on the other side of it, I feel bad for what I put my teachers through. Please be praying for the sanity of all the teachers. People are on edge and are getting set off over the simplest of things. Give us strength, perseverance, and PATIENCE until that very last day. Pray for the brain power of the students. School is not over yet and they still need to work hard through their finals. Pray that they do not totally lose it and remember that they cannot give up and celebrate just yet. We are almost there! Pray that we all make it in one, happy piece. 

Field Trips (part 1)

As the year began to wind down, a lot of the secondary teachers started planning field trips with their homeroom classes as a treat to go somewhere fun. Now, I would love to be able to take my students anywhere around here that would even make the smallest blip on fun’s radar but since they are so little, my options and ideas have been limited. Kara took the 8^th graders swimming, Lori took the 10^th graders zip-lining, and all the teachers are throwing the 11^th graders a fancy dinner party… my 3^rd graders? Well, we find our own field trips to go on.

The Beneficio. Recently we studied the farmer’s field in Science – so we learned all about soil, fertilizer, underground animals, and plants in a field. The perfect place to expand on our studies is right here in town! The Micro Finance group in La Unión has their own coffee processing plant and I remembered talking about few of those same topics when I took a tour of their farm. After asking the guys if they would be willing to entertain my little ones for a couple of hours and teach them a thing or two, our first trip was set! Honduras doesn’t have as many precautions or regulations like a school in the States would have so I did not need to get permission slips, release waivers, or write up any proposal for the trip. All it took to get approval was a five-minute conversation with our principal to get the ok and a note home to parents politely letting them know that we would be going. We also do not have the funds to really support big trips so instead of finding us transportation to get there, we walked.

Rolando and Marco were especially excited to be taking their class to the farm because their families work there – Marco’s dad, Martyr, and Rolando’s uncle, Gilberto. They were bragging for days leading up to the trip because they already knew everything that was planned for us, and they were so proud of their family members for getting to teach us. Harriet also joined us for the journey because I did not feel super confident about herding a group of 13 nine-year-olds to the coffee processing farm, or the beneficio, and I greatly appreciated her presence the whole time. The walk from school to the beneficio is only about 20 minutes, but when you have the legs of a little kid, that’s a long time. We took our sweet time getting there; stopping for snack breaks when they got hungry or resting on the side of the road when they were complaining about being too tired. All their weariness disappeared the instant they saw the beneficio and took off running to get there.

While we were there we got to see a lot of things! Martyr started the extravaganza by immediately making everyone climb up a steep hill (half of them quickly remembered how tired they were and whined about having to trek more) to the water filter. Here, they filter water and use it in the various stages of coffee processing so that they coffee beans are cleaned well and not contaminated with any parasites or bacteria lurking in the water. I’m almost positive my students could not tell you a thing about the water filter because they were captivated by the frogs inside the water tank and the spiders making their webs around it. Isn’t nature just so enchanting?

From there Martyr explained in detail how they process the coffee. We observed the different machines that separate the good coffee beans from the bad ones, de-pulp all the beans, let the beans ferment, and then where the beans dry. This didn’t really have much to do with what we had been learning about, but I was not going to stop Martyr from showing off the great things that the Micro Finance group is doing and plus, coffee is the way of life down here so it was neat for them to see the behind-the-scenes work. Many of them (if not all) either live on a farm or have a family member who picks coffee for a living. Prior to this trip I’m not sure many of them knew what happened to the coffee after it had been picked and left the fields.

We wandered over to where the team had been coming up with ways to be resourceful. In one area they were collecting rain water in a pond and using it when the days were long and hot, and without running water. The machines need a lot of water to process the coffee which means they can never afford to be without water. They need as much back-up as possible, and sometimes they even find little fish to grow in there. Martyr explained to the kids how they can recycle water and collect it to use it many different ways too.

The next part was where all the real fun was waiting for my kiddos. Gilberto had obviously put in a lot of effort to preparing the ‘educational’ side of the presentation. He made them all sit in rows, like a classroom, and talked to them about the different layers and components of soil, soil erosion from wind and water, fertilizer, and how worms play a role on the farm. I loved listening to him because everything he said was what we had talked about it class, so he reassured me that I was teaching the right thing! I loved watching their faces light up when they knew exactly what he was talking about and could impressively answer his tough questions. I also liked to watch the connections they made between the basic instruction I had given them in English to the detailed information Gilberto was giving them in Spanish. It was like everything suddenly made sense to them. I was proud to watch them keep the conversation going by asking great questions to further explore this topic.

The rest of our time was spent playing the in the organic fertilizer that the guys were cultivating. Underneath an innocent layer of soil is a world of squirming, slimy worms that my munchkins could not wait to get their hands on! They were totally engrossed in digging for and finding worms to collect. Of course they all enjoyed dangling their new friends in my face and pretending to put the worms on me (bleck!), and I did not. Some of them started putting handfuls of dirt and worms in their empty snack bags so that they could take the little critters back with them. They also got to dig their hands into the barrel of microorganisms that get added to the fertilizer to help it break down the soil and dry coffee pulp. They were inquisitive and fearless the whole time and I was hypnotized by their curiosity.

Darwing and Elman were the most focused on our trip; they absorbed every word Martyr and Gilberto said. Their faces were always my favorite because they were so focused and were learning so much! I had flashes to their future of being great farmers and developing some new techniques to helping their farms prosper.

Our wondrous trip couldn’t last all day, unfortunately, so we said our thank-yous and good-byes then headed back to school. I was personally more exhausted on the walk home because all of their voices were flooding my ears as they had so much to say. They were talking a million miles an hour discussing what they had seen, their most and least favorite parts, and the worms of course. It was like they forgot I was there with them the whole time because they retold every moment to me. I did not mind. They were also very easily tongue-tied trying to figure out how to say everything they wanted to in English. I did a lot of translating on the way back. I was so glad to be back to school because then they could run off and tell everyone else about their experiences. The whole school was jealous of our adventure, and they should have been! My little ones learned so much and I was thrilled to have the Micro Finance group make science come alive for them.