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.