I know it’s been awhile since I’ve blogged. Part of that reason has been because I didn’t want to bore people with mundane stories about the kids or the school or my life. But, I leave for the States on November 9, and I’m not sure how long I will be there. That being said, I want to share what’s been happening and make sure that I upload as many pictures as I can so that folks can see the awesome kids!
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| Visiting teacher Sheri helps with the eggs |
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| Naika pounding the garlic for the eggs |
Life at the Center has been moving along nicely. On Fridays, Oct. 19 and 26 we had an agronomvisit to talk with the students. He shared the three main parts of the chicken, talked about what they ate and how much, how often they produced eggs, and what kind of coop and run they needed. The little kids were able to touch the chickens, watch me feed them, and gather some of the eggs. The older kids were able to hold the chickens, feed them, and gather eggs. The past two weeks we were able to use some of the eggs for our snack on Tuesdays—the kids thought that was pretty cool! Starting this week (Nov. 5th) the different classes will start taking care of the chickens each school day: feed them, give them water, gather the eggs, and keep the coop clean. At the end of the week, the students in the class and the teacher will split the eggs between themselves—they should be able to reap the fruits of their labors!
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| Helping Hands |
The week of Oct. 22-26, students took their first set of exams. I’m very proud of the students from Notre Maison—most of them they did an awesome job! Teachers worked hard to not only administer the exams but also grade them so that they could work on report cards this week.
On Oct. 31 we, the administrators of HCIE, did our first in-service for our staff. We spent much of our time discussing IEPs because we plan to start writing them this month for our students with learning disabilities and other special needs. Not many schools in Haiti write IEPs, so we are breaking ground here! Fortunately, we do not need to do this alone. Later in November, Dr. Hannah Ehrli and other experts will visit HCIE and help staff write the firs IEPs.
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| Even the boys are going to learn how to cook! |
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| Learning about chickens |
This coming week—Nov. 5-9—visiting retired teachers will do two days’ worth of lessons, demonstrating for the teachers how to do centers based on a theme. While that approach may seem “normal” for an American teacher, for Haitian teachers, centers are a huge change from what they are used to. We also have some visiting nurses who will do vision and hearing screening for the students and staff. It’s been interesting explaining to the staff how early detection of vision/hearing issues can impact learning. Maybe because those screenings just aren’t a part of Haitian education, they hadn’t really thought much about it.
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| The eggs are almost ready! |
I think in earlier posts I commented on how some of the kids weren’t always very nice to the special-needs students. They weren’t mean, but they showed their discomfort about being around these kids. Well, it’s slowly changing. More and more of the kids are looking for ways to help the special-needs kids. These are baby steps, but they are steps in the right direction.
