Happy Updates, Mostly Anyways

Wow do I have several updates from that last entry! For one, we did get a second teacher to work with first and second grade and she is great. She has even been a principal at one time so she knows what she´s doing. I have also found that she is pretty perceptive about the children, quickly noting that the 9 students in first grade all have very distinct abilities and life experiences.

In addition to all the great benefits of having another teacher (namely the kids being on-task), the estancia also received a ton of donations. Monday a group of people from the Police Department brought cake and gift boxes for each child. Not only did the gift boxes contain lots of toys edible goodies, each contained a physical education uniform for each student! All of the shirts and trackpants had the logo of the Estancia on them. I should take a picture--it´s pretty cool for such a small school in Honduras.

Tuesday we finally received the school supplies and uniforms from a scholarship we had applied for. Basically, the rotary club of Danli started a scholarship program last year to give poorer students the uniforms and school supplies that they would need to go to their neighborhood school (see last entry). Because all of the children at the Estancia share this need, the rotary club agreed to let our administration apply for the scholarships for each student (as opposed to each family applying individually). It´s a great scholarship which is designed to follow the students from year-to-year, as long as the students keep their grades up. So we finally got the scholarship, and with it came 30 backpacks STUFFED with school supplies based on grade level. For now, each student has what their teacher requested that they have, and we will continue handing out the supplies as the year goes on. The sixth graders are the only ones who are using their backpacks right now but if they use them wisely (i.e. don´t steal things), the younger grades will get a chance too.

This week we are starting a behavior point system. Each day the students can win up to 5 points each and will have an opportunity to buy extra school supplies and toys at the end of every week. I mention school supplies because the students have everything they need at the school, but if they want to color at home for fun, for example, they would have to buy crayons or colored pencils and a little notebook. I am really hoping that it works. The teachers are being very supportive so far of this new system so I hope that it does work in the long run.

One sad update is that the new family of four that I mentioned in the last entry has stopped coming to the school after only about two weeks. They moved to a nearby town and have to come by bus. I don´t know the details about why they moved, but I think it had to do with affordable housing and maybe a job opportunity for the mom. After they moved they still came to the Estancia occasionally with the exception of the eldest boy who stayed in town with his grandmother so that he could keep going to school. I just saw him on the street and he told me that his 3 siblings were no longer going to go to the school. Even though I didn´t know the students that well, I am really disappointed because the mom had literally begged us to have her students come to the school and seemed really committed to their education. Now it seems that education doesn´t matter much to her anymore, but maybe moving seemed to be her only solution to the problem of how she was going to feed her kids.