El Milagro

I have been assigned to the Bruce Peru school in El Milagro, a suburb to the north of Trujillo. El Milagro means "The Miracle" in English, and it is quite the contradiction when you walk through the area. Every morning we hop on a combie, and it takes about 20 minutes to get to our stop in El Milagro. The Bruce Peru classroom is located at the normal El Milagro colegio (elementary school). The director of the colegio has been nice enough to let us use a room for the morning. Here is a brief overview of the bad and good experiences I've had at Milagro so far.

The Bad:
I always travel to El Milagro with Lourdes, the Peruvian teacher hired by Bruce Peru. When I first came to Trujillo I was here for the first week of school. To start the year Juan was the teacher. After Kim and I came back from Huaraz and Cuzco, Juan had found another job so Lourdes had replaced him. Lourdes has been difficult to get to know. She doesn't seem to like to talk a lot and is not overly friendly to anyone. It has been difficult the past few weeks because the class is not very "classlike". Lourdes comes in to the classroom, sometimes takes attendance, and then starts giving out work to do without evening saying hello to the kids. I would like the class to feel more like a group. Lourdes has been getting better at giving the kids work to do, but her teaching style is very difficult for me to understand. I'm worried that the students aren't getting as much out of the classes as they should. Some other folks in the organization are concerned with her teaching style as well, so I've been waiting to see what happens. But it has been frustrating to watch.

The good:
For the most part the kids are fun to work with. It has been great to help kids one on one and actually feel like I've taught them something. I really enjoy teaching the older kids. Math works the best for me because I can use my basic Spanish to explain the math concepts fairly. And some of the kids are quite sharp and hard working. There are days when some of the children don't want to work or learn, and they can be very difficult and frustrating. There are only nine kids in the class now, and I've been able to get to know all of them pretty well over the past couple months. I have even been to some of their houses, with Rosa, and seen their living conditions. It makes it much easier to have more patience with them when I remember where they live and some of the hardships they have already encountered in their young lives.

A couple more good experiences:
About two weeks ago the director of the colegio asked us to plant a garden in front of the classroom. I asked the kids to bring plants from home and I bought several plants as well. The next day nearly everyone brought a plant, and most of the kids knew more about how to garden then me. It was a fun day (there are some pictures below). Yesterday and today I played soccer with the kids during recess. It was a lot of fun, eveyone laughing and the entire class participating. Someone would score a goal and the kids would run around celebrating just like the professionals.

Here some pictures I have taken the past few weeks... Chao, Brian

The colegio at El Milagro.


The children working on the garden.

A group photo after the garden was completed.

Rosa having a meeting with the children's mothers.

Omar posing on the top of the monkey bars.

Almost the entire class on the merry-go-round.

A nice artsy shot of the kids at the playground.