The Ups and Downs of Volunteering at Aldea Yanapay.

I have now been working at Yanapay for two full weeks and three days. Of course there´s a lot more to it than what I described in my first post on the subject and it is well past time for an update.





From Monday to Friday, 3 to 5 for two weeks I continued to tutor Yanapay´s younger children. Their prior education and attitudes were as varied as their personalities. Sometimes the poor quality of peruvian education, its inconsistency was really obvious... I taught a five-year-old who could read fairly well and a seven-year-old who barely knew their alphabet. Some days involved a lot of sighing on my part; trying to get my students to focus, not understanding a childs spanish, feeling completely useless and boring as a teacher. Others were fun and rewarding; finding a fun way to teach letters, having avid readers not want to stop for circle time, sharing smiles, hugs and high fives.

Every day after the first two hours we gather all the School One kids into a circle, holding hands, and march over to School Two for circle time. Sometimes we go as a train, sometimes we are dinosaurs, other days, jungle animals... Arriving at School Two I pry little fingers off my smock and cross the courtyard to sit with my family, who, all trying to get my attention at once, greet me with many hugs and shouts. Once we are all seated, Janek (or Raquel, or Yuri) counts to three and the school falls silent (well, most of the time). Once we start discussion it is a challenge to keep the kids quiet and focused on whoever is speaking. A lot of them are so busy raising their hands and, obsessing about what they want to say, that, when asked, they have no idea what the speaker has just said. We often get a good laugh from a little girl with Down´s Syndrome, Coral, who is prone to spout off nonsensical bits of information. For example, we were talking about birthdays yesterday and she raised her hand to tell us that on her birthday she would be turning Sunday years old. Alrighty then, Coral... Ylla is one of the youngest (and most adorable) girls. When it´s her turn to speak she uses the most hilarious, incessant hand gestures, causing everyone to giggle through her long and detailed stories.

me with some of my Uvitas

After circle time we have our family classes. I spent two weeks in the maroon smock of familia Uvitas with Natalie as my co-teacher. At first, I found my family overwhelming; they have a lot of energy, to say the least. A couple of especially loud and overbearing kids changed the dynamic of the whole class. Anderson always always wanted to be talking and sometimes would even raise his hand shouting, "¡Profe, profe!" the whole time, without having anything to say. When we called on him he would just umm and ahh incoherently! In my family I learned some important phrases very quickly:

Sientete. - "Sit down."
¡Cuidado! - "Careful!"
Calmense. - "Everyone calm down."
¡Chicos, silencia por favor! - "Kids, quiet, please!"
Escuchen su companero, por favor. - "Please guys, listen to your classmate."

A lot of the time it felt like the kids were paying zero attention and couldn´t possibly have taken in any of what we were trying to teach them... But when it came down to it, they were really excited to learn. Actually, I think that´s were a lot of the shouting and craziness stemmed from; everyone wanted to talk about our topic at once! I was constantly surprised by how much they would remember. The first week our theme was to sing a song in english, about nature. When we all put our heads together, we were able to create beautiful costumes and learn, by heart, the words of the song Natalie had composed to the tune of "You are my sunshine." When our Friday show came along, we presented what we had learned to the whole school and it turned out amazingly. The best part though, was the next week, when my family kept bursting into choruses of, "You are my sunshine, my only sunshine. You make the trees grow. You make birds sing."  They wanted to sing it before tutoring, while making costumes for the next weeks show, on our walk from rock climbing... The song became sort of our family anthem. Even our next presentation, which was about Colombia (featuring Shakira´s World Cup song) and which I thought was a somewhat of a disaster, was a favourite of all the other volunteers.

presenting what we learned about Colombia

This week I am working with familia Sol (Sun), who are 11 and 12 year-olds. I miss my little Uvitas. Even though they were crazy and exhausting, I find Sol more frustrating. The problem is that they have Attitude with a capital "A". It´s easier (I said easier, not easy!) to get them to pay attention, but harder to command their respect. Sometimes they are sweet and affectioante, but it doesn´t feel real.  When I wait with Sol in line to wash our milk cups and the Uvitas come running out of their classroom to wash theirs yelling, "¡Profe Julia!", telling me how much they miss me and asking when I am coming back to them I can tell where I am wanted.

I don´t know how people can stay here only a week. Even after two and a half I still have so much to learn... In some ways I still feel like a newbie, yet at other times I feel I am an old hand; like when I translated for the english-speakers at our Friday volunteer meeting.

I left this update too long to give a full account of all the joys and frustrations of working at Yanapay (fun kids, working with limited supplies), but I will say that it is both uplifting and frustrating, energizing and exhausting, but most of all wonderful, just plain old wonderful.

Con Amor,
Profe Julia de Canada