Girls Group take one

My girls group started with the most excitement that I have seen in this country. The girls were excited to have a new event, new group and have the focus be solely on them providing them a space for empowerment, learning and fun. However, with all good intentions, I still get to make mistakes and learn from my missteps. So, with that in mind, here is part one of a multipart blogpost about the journey of me and my girls group. The journey is not yet over, it's only just begun. So any potential negative ending hasn't really happened yet, it's my pessimism, being balanced out, or sometimes making me loco, by my hopeful idealism; I won't stop believing. The more I reflect on my girls group, the happier I am that I am working with them.

My group started when I took two girls to a regional girls conference and after the conference we met, planned for the following weeks meeting. They decided who they wanted to join the group and we all worked together and wrote invitations. The first meeting was awesome! There was lots of energy, the girls were leading the icebreakers, name games, discussions and I was getting to know the girls more. We used a few get to know you techniques from the girls curriculum which was developed by other peace corps volunteers. I found the worksheets extremely helpful and it gave the girls something to focus on during the class and helped to ease them into the curriculum of the program and gave me an opportunity to get to know them a little better. For example, we shared our nicknames, hometowns, how many brothers and sisters we have in our family and things like that. We had about two or three classes with this type of getting to know you activity.

When the group was starting, I had applied for and received a grant to celebrate international women's day, march 8th 2011. We celebrated the event on March 12th 2011 and several of the girls helped me in planning the event. Reflecting on the planning for this activity, I may have made one of my first missteps. I asked four girls, girls who didn't go to the conference, to help me in the planning...eh, my analyzing mind thinks this may have thrown off the event or the group as a whole or perhaps I offended the two girls I took. (I haven't worked with teenagers, much less teenage girls, in this capacity for quite some time and sometimes perhaps I forget to be more conscientious of my audience). I also may have offered this activity too soon in the existence of the group and didn't quite have the confianza, trust, needed to pull of the activity successfully.

Despite my analysis and reflection now, generally the women's day event went off well. The girls learned to make several different art products from recycled materials; tambourines, maracas, drums, mirrors and little lizards. I gave a talk about gender roles in the culture with one of the girls in the group (one who came with me to the conference) and about 35 girls from the home came to do art activities in the neighboring community. It was really cool to see the girls working with community members and doing different types of artwork that they may not have worked on before. The girls worked alongside members of the community, their caregivers and a few internationals, myself included. Some pictures of the event are below.

My awesome welcome sign made with the help of my wife

The youth hard at work learning their craft

The youth working on their mirrors

Finished products

One of the lizards finished and painted

Overall, the event was a success. The girls got out of the orphanage for an afternoon, shared learning a new activity with the neighboring community, used some of their creative/artistic mind, and were able to take a little souvenir home with them. Moreover, they got to see that they can be artistic with products they have lying around the house or can be easily found for little cost. I thought it was cool.

What I'm learning is that I can be pretty hard on myself. I had one idea of how the event would go and lo and behold, the event went a completely different direction. Does that make the event a failure or my girls group a failure? No, not at all. I'm learning to be easy on myself and let events and moments unfold as they're meant to. With all the planning in the world for an event, aspects will end up differently than I had imagined, and that's okay. In the end, the girls learned something and had a new experience. I hope I can, and I will, continue to provide that opportunity for them.

Boys Group

BOYS GROUP

Imagine a room, a school classroom in the Dominican Republic, where 10 young boys learn basic science skills, listen, are attentive and interested in the subject matter. It's not possible you say, I didn't think it possible...on a certain level of my consciousness I did believe. After my first three classes failed to keep the interest of the boys I was hoping would turn into my rockstar leaders, I decided to forge ahead and hope that some of them would stick around and stay interested. I mean, I was dealing with some serious behavior management stuff that I haven't dealt with since those old AYA days and I was dealing with the behavior without any apparent structure nor consequences. For example, in the middle of explaining the days lesson during my second class, not rocket science stuff I know, they were to pick out a picture from a magazine, cut it out and glue it to a piece of cardboard (they would eventually cut the picture and cardboard up to make their own puzzle), one of the kids gets up out of his seat, walks over to the other side of the room and roundhouse punches another kid across the back of his head. The assailant then strolls back to his seat, sits down and continues flipping through the magazine looking for an appropriate photo! I'm thinking to myself, what did I sign up for? and WHY DID THIS KID CLEAN THE OTHER ONES CLOCK?? I still don't know why and likely never will. The kid who got his noggin smacked didn't even bat an eye nor try and fight back.

I'm not a school teacher. I have little training in teaching and much less experience. I'm much more comfortable in settings outside the confines of a four walled classroom (I would have been more comfortable and at home under the shade of a tree in the town park or in the mountains, not in a classroom. And for my AYA'ers this kid and I are going on a long long long walk and it'll be me, you and gavin, or simon, or andrew, or jack, or dustin or...you get the point). Not only is teaching both my boys and girls group a personal challenge, but also I find myself conflicted because I have this resource (an actual classroom) which so many of my fellow PCV's don't have, would kill for (are writing grants for) AND I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH IT!

Well, thankfully I know an excellent school teacher and I get to speak with her everyday, my wife. She has been helping me set up a classroom management structure that the kids sometimes respond to and other times, well... After my first three disastrous boys classes, I created the sticker chart AND knew that I had to do a science activity the boys would love. I got lucky, I think. I found a used two liter bottle of coke, bought a liter and half of cooking oil, filled a 12 ounce coke bottle with water, bought alka-seltzer and borrowed food coloring from the volunteer house at the orphanage. I showed the boys how to make a lava lamp and they were transfixed. At the end of class I introduced the sticker behavior chart which would reward the boys for their participation, attendance and behavior during class. Even in the DR, stickers work, more or less, to entice the boys to come and participate and most importantly, their behavior has improved. I haven't had any clock cleaning incidents. I feel like my classroom is much safer for the kids and maybe they are learning, a little.

My favorite class, since blowing their minds with the homemade lava lamp, has been teaching the boys about movement/flight/force. I gave a brief lesson on measuring and force (Remember I'm a psychology major so Anthony go easy on me). The boys taped a string on one wall, measured it and marked it every 10 centimeters with a black marker, blew up a balloon, taped a drinking straw to the balloon and slid the straw through the string. Next, of course, they let go of the balloon as it flew in their faces because they put it on backwards! Once they figured out which direction to put the balloon on the string, they were laughing and jaws were wide open as they watched the balloon slide down the string and slap against the wall as the string ran out.

I loved seeing the smiles on these boys faces, their giggles of laughter as they enjoyed themselves in attempt to get their balloons to smack harder against the wall. For 15 minutes, they let go of their incessant need to fight, be bigger, badder and cooler than one another. They were just kids playing with balloons. Then they went back to "normal" and asked me for more balloons so they could chew on them like pieces of bubble gum. Okay, no you don't get another balloon kid. We did put washers on the balloons, making them weigh more. I attempted to teach them that the heavier an object is the more force is needed to move it along the string. I'm not sure if they got it, and may never be sure, but at the end of every class, when the boys give me a handshake, or fist bump or a hug, I get something.

Web Articles

My friend Christina wrote threes very flattering articles about some of the work I've been doing. Push THIS BUTTON, follow the link and you can read what she wrote about my work with the girls group.

I've also been teaching a small group of kids swimming. Follow the links on the NPH homepage to read the article about the swim club.