Schools; La Epifinia

I have been at La Epifinia for the last week and its been really interesting to now work at a third school as they are all so different. This school is quite a bit larger that the other two schools in terms of space and number of pupils. The day is split with secondary and grades 4-6 in the morning and about 100 or so Preschool, and grades1,2,3 for the afternoon, who the volunteers work with.

This school appears very well appointed and when in the school working with the kids who are all fairly well presented in school uniforms its easy to think this isn´t so bad, these kids haven´t got it that tough, whats all the fuss about? Its not until an escaped pig runs past or you leave the school gates and experience the villages that you realize from where the kids come and the challenges life throws at them outside the school gates. I will go into that more in a future blog.

Wednesday was parents meeting. Us volunteers were invited to participate and were given a very generous welcome by the area director. It was after two hours of quite significant lectures by the teachers to the parents, most on the theme that it is the parents responsibilty to assist with education out of school, that the director looked at me and asked me to address the room. I was not expecting this and naturally just when I needed it the most, in front of 12 teachers and 5o odd parents the Spanish part of my brain decided to freeze and I spluttered out an embarasingly poor speech. Truely awful. In desperation I got Armando, a Cuban volunteer to offer a few more words and out flowed something tantemount to poetry which made me feel all the more small. Oh well, that´s how it goes.......

Thankfully at Thursday´s parent teacher meeting in Elba Zamora I was a little more prepared and was able to speak for quite sometime in front of the parents on all the areas we cover as an organisation and even managed to lecture them on the importance of using the library we are providing and encouraging the children to read at home. Glad to make up for Wednesday´s disaster!