Monday, February 18, 2013

Updates and whatnot

It's been a while since I posted anything  - A lot has happened over the past month! In Jalpa, we have started a new secundaria class which is so far going very well. Despite the lack of internet and electricity, we have been watching, analyzing, and discussing movies and music videos. Right now we are talking about stereotypes surrounding love and romance, a theme which got off to a good start on Valentine's Day. I had them write their own similes, but without using any of the cliched comparisons, like "stars" "moon" "ocean" "flower" "springtime", etc. They wrote some pretty cute similes, including, "My love is like chocolate because it is sweet" and "My love is like cow's milk because it is natural". The primaria class in Jalpa is going well too; last week Kiera's three-legged races were a big hit and of enormous comedy value for us teachers. Today, the students took us for a walk to the lake after class and got very, very muddy.

In La Palma, things have been high-energy but relatively smooth. Kiera's afternoon class have been excitable as usual, but have been enjoying the unit on exercise and food groups. She did an activity where they had to guess how much sugar was in various pops and juices. I was surprised by the amounts. The kids were just like, "Whoa, two cups of sugar? AWESOME! I love sugar!" My morning class has been doing some more theatre activities, as well as a community mapping project in which they did a photo scabenger hunt for different important places and items in their community and worked in teams to make their own maps, complete with printed photos. We've also written some more letters to send to our B.C. penpals.

The secundaria class has also been pretty good - the chocolate trading game we played last week (exploring themes of globalization, fair trade, and exploitation) was actually a big success! Things got a little heated, with students attempting to take over the bank (me), one very greedy factory owner, and some pretty dramatic speeches at our mock union conference. The image of Angela, a quiet, studious 13-year-old, shaking her fist at the "trabajadores ingratas", and of Mariana, an eye-rolling ninth-grader, making a case for the rights of small cocoa farmers, was pretty fantastic. This week, we'll be continuing with these themes as students create and film their own commercials for invented fair-trade products. We also had several birthdays last week, so on Thursday we had a Valentine's/birthday party, which quickly degenerated into a cake-fight.

Otherwise, things have been pretty excellent - I spent a lovely few days in Guanajuato last weekend and will probably be going camping next weekend out near Jalpa, hopefully with Catherine and Kiera in tow this time. The kids asked us to take them along too... after exchanging looks of panic, we said, "NO."

Check out some recent photos, and thanks for reading!

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