Some of the students at Anthony's school patiently await the arrival of the Governor General

Greetings, everyone! It's been a few weeks since our last posting and we'll be up and around the country over the next few, so we thought that a brief update was in order for all of you loyal readers out there.

Before we get to the latest happenings, we would really appreciate it if when you're finished reading, or right now, you take a visit to this website and view the video. We think that it really helps put world development in a perspective that everyone can understand and relate to. For those of you who are teaching, this is a great opportunity to provide your students a unique perspective of the world we all share. The video was shown to us during our conference this past week and I think it really helped to drive home the reason that all of us are here in Belize doing the work that we do.

January and February have been a whirlwind combination of workshops, presentations, Peace Corps conferences, meetings, and quite a few exciting community events. We have continued to work with the District Education Officers from the Ministry and our schools in developing a sensible and user-friendly process of moving teachers toward the implementation and utilization of a balanced literacy approach. The process has involved many workshops where we've worked with teachers from all over Belize District on a newly published national curriculum. Some days the work seems long, frustrating, and grueling, but we think, in the end, all will work out. Many teachers at Anthony's school have already focused their energies on writing integrated lesson plans and teaching according to a finely tuned Language Arts block schedule (Anthony is really excited about this and hopefully the changes will help lead to an increased literacy rate among children in Belize).  Ginnie's teachers are working on developing their lessons and will implement the new plan soon, we hope.

Teachers hard at work planning their language arts with a new curriculum

A meeting of the education volunteers in Belize City

In other news, Ginnie's Club GLOW has continued having meetings each week at Trinity School (She'll tell you all about it here :)

 

Making Valentine's!  We invited the one boy who wanted to make one for his mom that day - we were sharing the love

The GLOW Girls always bring joy!  Their laughter and enthusiasm and curiosity make every session a lot of fun.  This year, we've practiced yoga in the park during the wonderful cold fronts, discussed ways to serve as leaders at school (such as reading to the infant students and helping in the library), hold some general "girl talk" sessions and of course do arts and crafts.  This week, with the start of Women's Month, we had a session on female role models and all the girls drew and colored pictures of inspirational women.  I enjoyed hearing the things the girls find inspirational; including such things as being an athlete, being a mom, caring for others, working hard, and the one that made me feel special when a girl said her picture was of me helping a woman cross the street and saying that she wants to be like me because I help others.  If I ever have a day when I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed I just have to think of the moments like this that remind me why I'm here - I love these girls.   They inspire me!

The other inspirational ladies I continue to work with are both the teen moms and the young women's leadership group at YES.  The leadership series we've been facilitating with the teen moms is going really well.  So far we have determined our leadership styles in a True Colors activity, designed Super-MOM Mascots (one is named Splendishous 3D Mom - how fun is that?), and participated in  successful communication activities.  We have a managing stress and yoga session this week that everyone is looking forward to since we will leave feeling relaxed and refreshed (I hope, anyway!).  

The leadership group has elected their co-leaders and I'm now supporting them as an advisor to help them to plan the group meetings.  This is just what I love to do - helping young leaders find their voice and succeed.  We have a campaign now with YES on ITS (intergenerational transactional sex, which is very similar to the commercial sexual exploitation of children campaign only not limited to those under 18 years of age) and will be working with the leadership group on some really impressive ad campaigns.  I'll tell about them when they are ready to air!

Alright, back to Anthony with news from his Games Club...

My after school Game's Club has continued to be a hit with many students. Thanks to a grant I received from KIDS to KIDS last Fall, the school was able to purchase a bunch of fun board games for the new club. Students in Standard 2, 3, 4, and 5, all participate on alternating days. We play games such as Uno, Memory, Mancala, Guess Who, and PayDay (the silly dances the students do when they win lots of money or get their paycheck in PAYDAY are especially hilarious).

Kids enjoying a little friendly competition

Students have really enjoyed these games and we're all looking forward to many more meetings before the end of the year.

In Peace Corps news, each of us has been working to organize the committees we chair (Ginnie - WID/GAD; Anthony - HIV/AIDS). We have many busy months ahead with various side projects, but we're both quite excited about some of the great plans we've organized with other volunteers. Ginnie is working with the committee to continue the development and sustainability of Club GLOWs throughout the country, as well as planning a second Camp GLOW for this summer. Anthony is hard at work with other PCVs finalizing plans for HIV/AIDS education and outreach events that will be held during La Ruta Maya. La Ruta Maya, the Belize River Challenge, is a grueling multi-day canoe race traveling a perilous river route across the country of Belize. The route runs West to East along the Macal and Belize Rivers, once the only link between beautiful San Ignacio, in the foothills of the Maya Mountains, and the bustling port of Belize City. This is a race for everyone and occurs each year in March, coinciding with Baron Bliss Day. This year the canoes will leave San Ignacio on March 6 and arrive in Belize City on March 9. The teams, which race for station prizes along the way, battle for the major cash prizes awarded at the end of the race. Anthony has helped in the coordination and mobilization of a team of 12 PCVs that will be on the ground throughout the route for 5 days running various HIV/AIDS-related outreach activities. We will also have seven Peace Corps' teams to cheer on while we work and watch the race. We'll definitely post pictures when we return during the second week of March. In preparing for the event, Anthony helped to organize an outreach in San Ignacio this past Saturday (see the pictures below).

Cayo Market HIV/AIDS Outreach

 This girl was just too adorable 

The Belize River in San Ignacio;  Baby chicks for sale at the market (ironically enough, their dead elder relatives sat in buckets on the table right next to them)

After leaving San Igancio, we headed to Belmopan for an All Volunteer Conference where we met with fellow volunteers and staff to review projects, discuss our experiences, and receive additional training on our newly revised reporting tool (essentially this tool plots all of our work and activities into a country-wide database that is sent to Washington so they can better evaluate posts). The AVC was fun and allowed for many opportunities to reconnect with people who we hadn't seen for a while. In the off times, as we all attempted to kill many hours in a hotel like responsible adults, we played a PC version of the NewleyWed Game and had Volunteer arm-wrestling competitions. It was a lot of fun mixed in with lots of work, and suffice to say, we were both quite happy to return to our sites after almost seven days away from home.

 

The PCV NewleyWed Game.  We came in 2nd place!

 

Arm Wrestling Champs '09; Hanging out with other PCVs during our All Volunteer Conference 

On Friday this week Sir Colville Young, the Governor General of Belize, visited Anthony's school as part of the Visiting Author's Program. Sir Colville Young's position as governor general is an office appointed by the Queen of England as a direct representative of the British Monarchy in Belize.

 

Kids waiting patiently for the Governor General's arrival;  Sir Colville Young led into church by Standard II students; The award-winning St. Luke's Choir perform the National Anthem during opening ceremonies

Students presented some really great work to classroom visitors

Sir Young is highly talented in many areas of the arts. He has composed all manner of musical pieces from operas to cantatas to others. He published a series of books of and about Belizean literature, including "Literature and Education in Belize," "Creole Proverbs of Belize," "From One Caribbean Corner" and "Caribbean Corner Calling;" the last two containing poems in English and Belize Creole. Of these books, "Creole Proverbs" is his most recognized. In 1993, just before becoming Governor General, he published a book of short stories called "Pataki Full," earning acclaim from the local writing community. His stories have been featured in the Belizean Writers Series in "Snapshots of Belize," and a play, "Riding Haas," in the drama anthology "Ping Wing Juk Me." It was quite an honor to meet him and was especially rewarding to listen to him as he read the students a short story from his book "Pataki Full."

One of my favorite classrooms at school.  The teacher in this class never ceases to amaze me with her incredible creativity.  In this shot the students are playing a sight word game with a bean bag

As he read, he acted out the different voices of each character and had the students rolling around laughing in their seats.

Students listening attentively to the story as Sir Colville Young reads from one of his collections of folktales

After a presentation of different gifts from Saint Luke's, everyone walked around and visited the classrooms that were all done up and decorated for the visit.

Anansi the spider hangs in one of the Standard I classrooms.  Anasi is a famous character in many African folktales that have become a huge part of the Creole culture.  One of our favorite Creole sayings comes from these stories, "If the pin neva bend, the story neva ends." A cliffhanger of sorts written at the end of every tale;  The second picture is of a young boy from Standard 2 that dressed up as the Governor General

These kids just love posing for the camera

Many students gave presentations and others sat and watched as their work was viewed by the Governor General and his wife. It was a lot of fun, and definitely added to our list of things that we love about Belize (I mean, how often do highly esteemed government officials and dignitaries visit schools back in the US?)

The outside of many classrooms were decorated as well.  This particular setting was arranged to represent a scene from an old Creole song, "Leaky ol' Dory"

And...Don't forget to check out this site if you haven't already... 

Or check it out on youtube.com at this link... 

As always, thanks for reading and be sure to check back soon for further updates.

TMS Library - Take Two

As things continue to progress with cataloguing books, I need to make an important addendum to my previous post. I mentioned those who donated books through the coordinated school efforts and did not include our first sets of donations. These came from our friends Suzanne and Christine, Suzanne's students, and my grandmother and aunt. These books were the first to arrive and have been put to use for individual read-alouds and for one-on-one work with students. Many students request the Dr. Seuss books to re-read and we are looking forward to reading my personal favorite from fourth grade, Charlotte's Web! Since we've been using these books for nearly a year now, somehow they seem to have slipped my mind while working on the current catalog, but I assure you, we really appreciate them! All will find a permanent home in the library.


And, for all of you who want to help the library become functional, I have linked directly to the Peace Corps Partnership site on the righthand side of the page to make it easy to submit a donation (you can also click here). Our goal is to fulfill the grant request as soon as possible so we can purchase the supplies we need for shelves, chairs, and tables.


Thank you once again!

Trinity Methodist School Library Project

The books just arrived!

Ginnie has been working diligently (with a lot of help from Anthony and students and staff of Trinity and Wesley College) to establish a library/resource center for the children and teachers of Trinity Methodist School.  During the past year, donations were collected at Mount Ida College and South Elementary School (in Massachusetts) to be sent to Trinity for the library project.  In addition, a generous donation was made by Hyde Shipping Corporation and a grant was provided by Kids to Kids, an organization based in Massachusetts that supports projects in education, athletics, and the arts.  It is a grand project and is moving along slowly but surely.  We are grateful to everyone whose assistance supports this library.

Thanks to the children of South Elementary School in Hingham, Ginnie’s mother’s co-workers in South Carolina, and the students and staff of Mount Ida, over 4000 books were collected to start a library.  As of now, we still have a lot of work to do and have established a Peace Corps Partnership Program grant application to support the cost of shipping the books and purchasing much-needed materials for shelves, fans, and supplies for the library.  The students and teachers at Trinity are working hard to catalog and organize books, as well as fundraise for building shelves and other supplies.  

The Mount Ida College Outing club supported the project by fronting the money to ship books to Florida where they were then taken by Hyde Shipping for transfer to Belize.  As a non-profit organization, college student fees are unable to be used for this purpose, so a percentage of the grant will cover those shipping costs.

  When the books arrived at school, many students were eager to get right into them.  With the assistance of boys in Standards 5 and 6, all 63 boxes were moved to the library space on the second floor.  Some students from Standard 6 came in to look at what we received and helped open up the boxes.  When I turned to speak to a student, the others had already found a book and were perusing them.

 

Every day, students come to visit the library and browse through the books to read them during breaks.  We will soon start our library committee to oversee the borrowing of books and establish a library club of student monitors who can help maintain the space and participate in planning library activities.  We dream of a space that will be used forever at the school and will serve the community as well.  The teachers and students will benefit from the direct usage of books and reference materials and parents and siblings will be able to borrow books and use the space for research on projects of their own.

 Wesley College Students label and alphabetize books

  

This is the only shelf space we have, currently books are stacked by level; by adding shelves to the library, we will be able to shelve books in a more user-friendly way

As we continue our progress, I’ll keep you posted with pictures and stories.  If you are interested in supporting the project, please visit the Peace Corps Partnership site by clicking here.