Class Is Now In Session!

Alright so starting in Feb (who knows when this will post) I am starting to teach classes for juuust about every group we have established in the barrio. For starters the niños or the younger kids, will be getting art clases, English (ugh hate it but they want it so fine…), possibly some dance and self esteems. For the jovenes, or teenagers, I’ll be teaching, English, self-esteem, leadership, Health & AIDS/HIV and maybe some dance in there too. I plan on doing a lot of projects and service learning as we call it in the Peace Corps to help develop leadership and cooperation skills for the jovenes. For the Mujeres De Lucha I’m going to be teaching classes on communication, accounting (Dios mio!), and motivation. I’m even going to be giving some charlas on health and exercise to the ederly group or the adultos mayores.

There clearly aren’t enough days of the week to fit this all in, but its going to work out some how. Right now the kids are on vacation so I’m going to work with them at least 3 days week. The niños in the morning and the jovenes in the afternoons. The Mujeres are going to be basically the weekends i.e. Friday and/or Saturdays and the adultos mayores whataever day I leave open to come see them.

I most nervous about my Spanish! The Mujeres and I have come up with our own way of communicating. Since they are so sweet they let me get by with some pretty messed up Spanish and they never correct me. It only becomes apparent when Im speaking to ANYone else. They cannot understand me usually…(this is why I need a tutor) and I’m like right…only Mujeres get me cause they let me get by with madness. So when I have a group of teens that CERTAINLY would rather be outside playing soccer on their school vacation than listening to self esteem charlas….bad Spanish is only going to make it worse. Oh sure I have games, activities and what not to spice it up, but teens are the toughest crowd. Since I want to work with youth now and in the future there is no time like the present to just jump in there and do my best. I know there is no way we can spend two months together in class and me not learn anything and them not learn anything. We will both surely gain something from the experience, so I just have to keep that in mind at all times.

When school gets back in session around April I’m hoping that maybe I can still get one day with the jovenes afterschool or something. You know as a youth group kind of thing. There is an existing group of jovenes already, but it has come to my attention that there are some teens in the community that are def excluded from this group Not good for self esteem. My dream is get all of the teens working together cause there is really no need for strife man. My thought…build a garden together and the byproduct will be new friendships formed. Vamos a ver. Wish me luck!